Is dental spending actually growing or just appearing to grow? It looks like growth and it mostly isn't. You will see headlines every year saying total dental spending went up. Strip out inflation and the picture flips, because for many years the real increase has been flat or negative. The raw dollar figure rises while the buying power behind it does not. That gap matters, because it means the demand for your services is not actually expanding the way the cheerful charts imply. You will not see the ADA or the academies lay all of these trends out side by side, [...]