Math has never been my strong suit, but economics as a study of people and behavior has always fascinated me.

And, right now, that study says Americans are acting oddly.

By several measures, America has a strong economy.

Unemployment’s back to lows seen before the coronavirus pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of jobs added every month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those jobs are coming in higher-paying professional and health care sectors, not just the lower-wage hospitality industry.

According to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, Americans at the end of March had a collective $18.5 trillion in deposit, savings, and money-market accounts, about $5 trillion more than before the pandemic. The Journal said even lower-earning Americans had pooled more money. Americans’ net worth, which includes homes and stocks, was eight times Americans’ disposable income at the end of the first quarter, more than during the 2000s housing boom, according to the Journal.

Despite all the indicators showing Americans as a whole are sitting pretty — they’re working, have money in the bank, and have assets they could borrow against if times got tough — Americans feel like we’re sitting smack dab in the middle of a recession.

According to that same story in the Journal, growth in consumer spending has flattened from 7% last year to 2% this spring. A long-running University of Michigan household survey found consumer sentiment as low as it was during the 2007-09 Great Recession.

Why? Record-high inflation that means, while Americans may have more money, that money gets them less. That’s driving down consumer sentiment, which tightens up spending.

And that tightened spending can have ripple effects throughout the economy. The stock market contracts. Restaurants and stores see fewer customers, which causes them to hold off on hiring or — if business ticks down enough — even lay folks off. Laid-off workers dig into their savings or take on new debt, eating away at wealth.

In short, our bad views about the economy right now could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we Americans stay pessimistic and keep our wallets in our pockets, we could deflate an economy that’s actually humming pretty well.

But, if we’re too optimistic and go out and spend our wealth, that could drive up demand, which could drive up prices further, which could cause more of us to pull back on spending, which starts those nasty ripple effects again.

The economy depends on a delicate balance of just the right levels of optimism and spending and stable prices.

That’s the macro, but it’s made up of millions of micro-economies. Each of us has a personal economy, a set amount of money and a set of values that determine what we’re willing to do with that money.

When we individually see we’re paying twice as much at the grocery store for the same items we’ve always purchased and twice as much at the pump to drive as much as we’ve always driven, we may make decisions to try to compensate. We may buy fewer grocery items or change our diets to eat cheaper. We may take fewer trips. We may do such things even if we could technically afford to keep acting the same way by digging a little deeper into our healthy savings accounts.

As we see those bills piling up, notice our favorite treats absent from our cupboards, and we don’t see our friends as often because we’re not making the trip, no one could blame us for feeling sour about the economy, however strong that economy may be.

Multiply that sentiment by more than 100 million households across the U.S., and the massive American economy starts to shift.

It fascinates me to think that we’re all so interconnected, that each of our individual choices can accumulate into an avalanche that moves the stock market, causes the president to give a speech, causes the Fed to tweak interest rates.

Our policymakers have plenty of decisions to make. They must fix the supply chain issues that have contributed to higher gas prices. They must make sound decisions about interest rates and whether to suspend gasoline taxes (they should).

But it seems there’s plenty each of us individually could do to keep the economy humming.

I’m no economist, but it seems to me we should try for as much economic optimism as we can and continue spending as much as we think we can without going overboard, especially at locally owned businesses.

So go ahead and go out to eat. Buy yourself that new swimsuit you’ve been wanting. Take a trip to see your friend.

And try to be as chipper about it as you can.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-354-3112 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.