#144 Be Anxious about Nothing
Anxiety is becoming its own industry which will slow GDP Growth, but for Christians, “…the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
 
I said to a young woman in my class recently, “You’re in the happiest group in the world.  A Christian American woman.  Now, if you get married, your chances of being happy increase even more.”  Much of the data for that description comes from the book Gross National Happiness by Arthur Brooks.  

Anxiety is Growing Faster than GDP
But many people are not happy, and are suffering from anxiety.  Especially since the pandemic.  Here are a few data points: 

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults age 18 or older, or 18.1% of the population every year (Anxiety and Depression Assn. of America).
Some 12.5 million working days a year are lost due to work-related stress, depression, or anxiety.
50% of employees in one survey said that stress and anxiety impact the quality of their work (Anxiety and Depression Assn. of America).

By definition, anxiety is the body’s way of telling us something isn’t right. Every person aligns their life with something.  It’s called worldview.  Christians align with the Christian worldview: Creation, fall, redemption.  This definition of anxiety suggests that the person’s life is aligned with something else.  I’m humble about this.  Professionally, I am not a psychiatrist, and personally, I have been blessed to have generally good emotional health.  I have great sympathy for people who suffer from anxiety, and I’m not here to offer simple bromides like, “Nail it to the cross” because I don’t know which hammer and nails you would use.  I will try to stay on the Christian economics viewpoint on this difficult and complex subject. 
Daniel Henninger’s article in the Wall Street Journal recently was titled, The Next Pandemic: Anxiety Over Life Itself.  He wrote, “A medical advisory group to the federal government has just recommended that all adult Americans age 19 to 64 be screened for anxiety.  One could see this coming: The ultimate pandemic is now life itself. “
 
Economics
In an interview earlier this summer, Dennis Prager asked if I was an optimist or a pessimist.  I answered that as the Christian Economist, I operate in two camps, and I have two different answers.  
First, the pessimistic economist.  Since my DBU sophomores were born in the year 2000, the US debt to GDP ratio has doubled from 57% to 124% and it’s getting worse every day.  Inflation is making people poorer, and it is especially impactful on the poor, whom we Christians care about.  The Fed is no longer independent,