A couple of weeks ago a Wall Street Journal columnist plaintively asked why the electorate was so angry and supporting people like Sanders and Trump when the economy was actually doing pretty well. Perhaps they had been reading the Journal’s editorial page which has been loudly arguing for 7 years that Obama was driving the economy into the ground.

Yesterday Martin Feldstein, hardly a Democratic apologist since he chaired Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, weighed in with his evaluation. Households are in good shape with disposable income up 3.5 percent and despite reports to the contrary, real household income rose 40 percent between 1979 and 2010 when you take into account taxes and transfers.

He expects the decline in oil prices will slowly show up in household spending, after people finish paying down debts, a move that will occur in 2016 and 2017. Interesting piece, but the WSJ does have a paywall.