“How’s the economy?”
One of my favorite questions. In terms of staying power, it has fed our news-hungry brains since the inception of headlines. News outlets, just like many supposed economists, will give us two opposite and extreme answers. They leave viewers to find the right answer between “your house payment will double” and “your retirement will hit a million by year-end.”
My more principled nature does not couple well with this sort of analysis. I am no economist or expert, but I know that major economic change is very hard to spot in real time. In the past 10 years alone, Clay County has endured the historic 2016 flood, vacating residents, closing businesses, school closures, budget cuts, public corruption, and much more. So, how’s the Clay economy? Well, not great. But maybe—just maybe—we are at an economic turning point.
The challenge is knowing when that turn is real. One headline or statistic won’t be able to tell us if the entire system is turning itself around. Are we recovering, or just pausing? Have we hit a bump, or found the bottom? Where do we even look to find answers?
These are not questions I can answer with any degree of certainty, but recent reading on the Great Depression has given me a different way to think about them. False Dawn, written by George Selgin, is the one the most comprehensive reads on the Great Depression you can find. Selgin committed his career to studying the Great Depression, and False Dawn tries to capture his thoughts on what led to, perpetuated, and ultimately ended the worst economic downturn we have ever seen in the United States. Link to False Dawn is below:
Selgin, as a part of a massive historical debate on the Depression’s end, gives his complex and heterodox perspective on the causes and resolutions to the Depression, and a key idea for him is that economic recoveries often become visible when private investment begins to return. He argues that it was the return of private investment that helped lift the economy out of the depths of the Depression. Why? Because when people believe their investments will pay off, they are more likely to take risks and put their capital and money to work.
What makes private investment so important is not simply the dollars involved, but what those dollars represent. When people choose to invest their money in a business, a property, or a new idea, they are making their judgment about the future. They believe conditions are improving enough to justify the risk they take on. So, when there is rising private investment, it can serve as an early sign of economic recovery—not because it guarantees success or prosperity, but because it suggests that investors and entrepreneurs are growing more optimistic about what the future holds.
For the first time in my life, I’m starting to see signs—small but noticeable—that business confidence may be returning to Clay. Private investment appears to be on the rise, as business activity, even at a modest level, is becoming more frequent.
Just in the Town of Clay alone, this summer is expected to host a new ice cream location, two brand new nail salons, a formal boutique, various food truck locations, and more AirBnB locations. Back in February, County Commissioner Duane Legg shared some recent data on business registration growth that evidenced this trend: Clay County ranked third in business registration growth for February 2026.
None of these, on their own, mean the economy has turned around. Some of these businesses may not last. That’s not really the point.
It is rather the frequency of business activity, whether successful or not, that I believe signals brighter days ahead. Entrepreneurs and businesspeople are beginning to feel like Clay is a place to invest again. Some say tourism is driving this confidence. Perhaps it’s just time for something to happen. Regardless, it’s hard to look away.
We may not be able to measure a turning point in real time, but we can start to recognize its early signs. And right now, those signs, however small, are beginning to show.
So how’s the economy?
Maybe not great. But maybe, for the first time in a long time, it’s starting to believe in itself again.
