If the Federal Reserve is convinced that it has “conquered inflation after three long years,” as the Associated Press reports, voters aren’t so sure. That’s the upshot of a new poll showing that Americans, “bruised by an inflation rate that hit a four-decade high two years ago,” aren’t as sanguine as the sages of the central bank about the economy. That’s largely because even if the rate of inflation has slowed, the cumulative effect of the price increases is what rankles.

The lingering effect of the inflation spike, the AP reports, “has pervaded this year’s presidential contest,” in part because “shoppers are upset over their grocery bills.” On average prices are 20 percent higher than when President Trump was in office. That’s just the average. Sugar and eggs cost 40 percent more than in 2020, Pew Research says. Bread is 46 percent more expensive. No wonder voters are angry — as Marie Antoinette learned the hard way.

So while President Biden, Vice President Harris, Chairman Jerome  Powell of the Fed, and their allies in the press are painting as rosy a portrait as they can of the economy, the voters fume. Mr. Powell, at his press conference last week, tried to palm off on a noble public the idea that “people in their daily decisions, they’re not thinking about inflation.” That, in his telling, is “a good definition of price stability.” Translation: The American public is stupid.

To be sure prices have, for the most part, stabilized — even if they are rising at a pace at least a quarter higher than the Fed’s own target — compared with the 9.1 percent jump seen in the summer of 2022. Yet “Americans still see high prices as a financial burden,” economist Sofia Baig explains. “When most people think about inflation,” the AP observes, “they think about how much lower prices were two or four years earlier.”

Fed officials prefer to look at the shorter term, the AP says, comparing prices to  “a year ago, six months ago, even one month ago.” Hence the condescension of economists who dismiss Americans’ day-to-day experience. “Over time,” Ms. Baig croons, “consumers typically adjust to higher prices.” She waves off the anger over inflation — “You hear your grandparents talking about a bottle of Coke costing some egregiously low amount.”

Voters today are frustrated, though, not because a bottle of soda pop costs more than a nickel. It’s that incomes haven’t been keeping up with inflation. As our Larry Kudlow observed last week, growth in real median household income was some seven times higher under Trump than Mr. Biden. Only in 2023, the Census Bureau just reported, did that inflation-adjusted income statistic approach its 2019 level.

We’re not here to gainsay that the Covid pandemic bears some blame for our adverse economic winds. Yet these trends were exacerbated, not alleviated, by the policies pushed by Mr. Biden — more spending, higher taxes, a wider net of regulations — helped along by Ms. Harris with her tie-breaking vote in the Senate. The solutions offered by Ms. Harris — top down regulation like price controls and rent caps — are a recipe for a weaker economic future.

That’s given Trump a chance to present voters with a brighter vision for the economy. His recipe of lower taxes and less regulation has already proved its ability to foster growth. Yet the opportunity still beckons for Trump and his fellow Republicans to present an agenda to restore honest money. That would offer the best defense against high inflation. The best start would be for Congress to weigh America’s experiment with fiat currency.

Such an effort could contrast today’s price spiral with the gold standard that in its heyday between 1879 and 1913 held inflation to but 0.1 percent a year on average. What a contrast with economists who today claim “inflation has always been happening, but, at a certain point you kind of take in the new prices and get used to it,” as the AP says. The voters, only about a third of whom rate the economy as somewhat or very good, are not to be fooled.