Two Economies by Jaci Turner There are two economies in this country, though we pretend there is only one. One lives on television screens— all arrows green and climbing, a chorus of smiling anchors calling it a boom, a miracle, the best we’ve ever had. 🧵

This economy speaks in numbers too clean to be real: indexes, futures, gains. It lives in boardrooms, inside the language of people who never wonder how much milk costs or what a missed paycheck means.

And then there is the other one— the one we wake up inside. The one in grocery aisles where everything costs more than it used to. The one in kitchens where rent sits heavy on the table like an unpaid bill. The one in cars that need repairs we can’t afford, and pharmacies

where insurance feels like a riddle no one ever solves. It’s the economy shaped by what we carry in our hands and in our hearts— worry, hope, endurance. The quiet math of ordinary people. And sometimes I think the two economies don’t even know the other exists.

One believes it’s winning. The other is just trying to breathe. Maybe that’s why the country feels torn— because we keep measuring success with the wrong rulers, forgetting that a rising market is not the same as a life that finally feels livable.