The National Retail Federation projects Americans will spend a record $38 billion on Mother's Day this year, up from the previous record of $35.7 billion in 2023 — yet the story inside those numbers is strategic retreat, not exuberance: shoppers are trading down on gifts, bargain-hunting on flowers, and splurging selectively rather than freely. The pattern is familiar from every inflationary period in American retail history — nominal spending rises while real purchasing power and consumer confidence fall, producing headline records that mask household strain. When aggregate spending sets records even as families explicitly budget and substitute, that is the definition of a price-level problem, not a demand problem.