The eroding-buffers theme is the one I keep coming back to — I'd just add that the buffers don't drain at the same rate. Aggregated across households, governments, and corporations, "declining" looks gradual. But at the bottom of the household distribution, the buffer didn't decline this year; it hit zero a while ago. You can hear it in places the macro data doesn't reach: on Dollar General's June 2 call, the CEO said the core customer "continues to be financially constrained" and that many were cutting back on food, citing fuel costs and SNAP reductions. One retailer isn't the economy — but it's a clean read on the part of it that runs out of buffer first. By the time erosion shows up in the aggregate, it's been acute at the floor for a while.