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Tag: unemployment rate
Joe Biden

Wake Up And Look At What's Really Happening In The Biden Economy

You may have noticed in recent weeks that alarming headlines about inflation – specifically, those ubiquitous stories about the cost of gasoline, or eggs, or other household goods – have vanished. Media outlets no longer feature those fearsome charts with arrows zooming skyward, or video loops displaying the latest eye-popping gas station signage.

Much as the mainstream media seemed to enjoy scourging President Joe Biden with the bad news about raging hikes in the price of everything, that depressing theme has disappeared because inflation is falling.

In October, what economists describe as “core inflation,” meaning the price of goods and services other than food and energy, declined to 2.0 percent – the target set by the Federal Reserve. And what they understandably call “headline inflation,” the more volatile measure of prices that include all consumer purchases, including groceries and gas, dropped on a monthly level to zero.

Got that? Zero. Year over year, the rise in personal consumption expenditures has plummeted to three percent.

So encouraging were those numbers to the financial sector – and presumably the central bankers at the Federal Reserve – that some now forecast a cut in interest rates. Dropping rates would likely prevent the recession that has been forecast (with glee) by many Republicans – and bring America in for a “soft landing” from the pandemic recovery.

Will Biden get any credit for this improvement? Not from most media organizations, nor from pundits who wrongly blamed him for the inflation spurt in the first place, when they knew that other countries were suffering much worse price increases in the pandemic’s wake. Indeed, too many outlets are barely even noting that inflation has collapsed.

At the same time, the president’s “Bidenomics” program has brought continued steady growth and strong employment, with the annualized gross domestic product topping 5.2 percent in October – and unemployment steady at 3.9 percent. Economists have long tended to view a four percent jobless rate as “full employment,” essentially the best that can be achieved in a capitalist system without spurring inflation. Our current unemployment level is among the lowest in the G-20 industrialized countries.

The reason is so simple that even a wingnut can understand: Under this president, the United States has seen an unsurpassed record of job creation, with 14 million new positions since he took office, far more than the last three Republican presidents combined. The social impact of high employment is profound, which is why traditional Democrats like Biden consistently promote infrastructure, education, environmental, and income support policies that boost jobs. As California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom explained during this week’s Fox News debate with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis (whom he crushed), the nation is now seeing the lowest rate of poverty in our history, as employment among Blacks, Hispanics, and women have reached new peaks.

Are you starting to see a fuller picture here? Let’s add a few more features: Personal income rose over five percent in the first quarter of this year and contined to go up into the second and third quarters. Consumer spending rose 3.6 percent, while housing investment increased to 6.2 percent, almost half again what had been predicted.

You may well retort that polling consistently shows – and the media persistently emphasize – that most Americans say they are unhappy with the economy and blame the president, resulting in poor approval ratings and endangering Biden’s reelection prospects. And that’s undeniably true, as far as it goes. But more than one expert now wonders why, if so many of our neighbors feel pessimistic and even angry, they keep buying stuff as if everything is working out just fine.

Economist Dean Baker suspects the influence of slanted news coverage and can imagine a very different political scenario. “If we had the exact same economy, and Donald Trump was in the White House,” Baker says,”Trump would be endlessly saying ‘greatest economy ever.’ Every Republican politician in the country would be amplifying the claim and all the political pundits would be writing that the strong economy will make Trump almost a sure bet for re-election.”

Sooner or later, the majority of Americans will wake up and realize that Joe Biden has not only protected us from recession but has created the conditions for a generation of prosperity. Let’s hope they figure that out before it is too late – and vote to defend the future from Trump’s madness.

Why Would Any Voter Trust Republicans To Make A 'Better' Economy?

Why Would Any Voter Trust Republicans To Make A 'Better' Economy?

No delusion misleads American voters more than their certainty that Republicans are "better" and more worthy of "trust" on the economy than Democrats. Neither facts nor history support this durable fallacy, discredited by reams of studies over the years proving that Democratic administrations are consistently more successful in fostering economic growth, employment, family incomes, and nearly every other measure of prosperity — including reductions in the national debt.

That axiom has held true even when a Democratic president inherited the most miserable economic conditions from a Republican predecessor. It is certainly true of President Joe Biden, whose efforts to revive the United States from its pandemic slump have smashed records in the number of jobs created and sustained high employment. Inflation is beginning to abate, as are gas prices, and even so the latest quarterly data show renewed growth.

Yet because Americans are aggrieved over rising prices — and frightened by a potential recession — the mythology of Republican economic superiority now looms over the midterm elections. Evidently some voters aim to punish Biden for inflation by empowering his right-wing adversaries.

Before they do, perhaps they should ask how Republicans will exploit that enduring "trust" — and whether the result will be a "better" economy for them and their families. Based on past performance, and what Republican politicians themselves tell us, the only constituency that will see a better economy is the superrich.

In 2016, Donald Trump said he would close loopholes that allowed the very wealthy (including him) to avoid taxation. He also promised to erase the national debt and deficits in his first term. Instead, Trump and the Republicans in Congress passed an enormous tax cut that favored the wealthiest and inevitably exploded the deficit. Then the economy crashed.

Whatever their differences, that dismal Trump record is pretty much what George W. Bush achieved as president too. It is what Republicans always do.

Slashing taxes on the wealthy is what they yearn to do again — except that Sen. Rick Scott, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has added an even "better" idea: He wants to raise income taxes on poor and working families, who make too little money to pay that levy under current law.

If you're a middle-class or working-class voter, in fact, there is a familiar agenda of economic policies that you can "trust" the Republicans to promote, because they are the same policies that the reactionary party has endeavored to enact since forever. They have vowed yet again, for instance, to ruin Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which serve as economic bulwarks for most Americans. And once more they are threatening to weaponize negotiations over the national debt ceiling to ram through those destructive cuts.

Will that be "better" for the older and disabled Americans who depend on those programs, and their families? Probably not, but what could be even worse is the recklessness of Republicans who would abrogate the credit of the United States Treasury to complete that cruel mission. So determined are they to cancel the benefits that Americans spend a lifetime earning that they would jeopardize the entire nation's economic stability.

You can "trust" their commitment to such financial insanity, which they continue to proclaim in this campaign, because they have pursued the same catastrophic scheme dating back to the bad old days of Speaker Newt Gingrich.

You can also trust the Republicans to seek total repeal of Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan, because they attempted to zero out all the federal student loan programs (the opposite of what Trump promised). Would that work "better" for middle-class students and their families? Presumably not, but it's what they insist on — with no proposal to improve college affordability.

For them it is now a matter of principle to have no principles, no platform, no constructive program. Remember when Trump promised a beautiful new health plan to replace the Affordable Care Act with something better that would insure everyone at low cost? Of course you do, just as you remember "Infrastructure Week," which came and went and came and went like Groundhog Day (until Biden finally passed the landmark Infrastructure Act).

In power, the Republicans will take that same pernicious approach to every aspect of economic policy that might improve life for working families. Not only would they refuse to increase minimum wages — highly popular across party lines — but nearly every one of them rejects the very idea of a minimum wage. They would obstruct any effort to reduce the cost of prescription drugs — also very popular — and repeal the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that are driving down those prices. They may still be too incompetent to repeal Obamacare, but that won't stop them from trying — and they will propose no "better" insurance plan to replace the health coverage they're so eager to strip away.

What you can assuredly trust the Republicans to do is what they always do. What you must never expect from them is anything better.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.


Blame Biden For Higher Prices -- But Then What?

Blame Biden For Higher Prices -- But Then What?

No subject inflames political passions more than the powerful inflationary pressures that now squeeze every working family — and nobody likes to talk about inflation more than Republicans, who have reason to believe that rising prices will lift their political boats next November. Polls show that Americans furious over the costs of gasoline, food, housing and nearly everything else blame President Joe Biden, just as Republican leaders insist they should.

When playing this blame game, the Republicans like to keep things simple. The price hikes must be Biden's fault, because he is president while they are going up. And the way to bring them down is to elect congressional Republicans in 2022 and a Republican president, perhaps Donald Trump again, in 2024.

The problem with this simple-minded approach is that, like most economic analysis focused on a snapshot, it eliminates all the important facts and context. It is like saying that the COVID-19 pandemic — not the response, but the contagion itself — was Trump's fault because he was president when it occurred.

According to the Republicans, inflation's principal cause was Biden's spending on the American Rescue Plan, which pumped too much liquidity into the economy at a moment when production could not keep up. Fewer goods chased by more money inevitably made prices rise. But if that's true, then those same Republicans must explain why prices have risen at nearly the same rate across the developed world — and much more rapidly in some countries.

Across Europe, the current year-on-year inflation rate is 7.5 percent, or roughly one percent lower than in the United States, which clearly has nothing to do with Biden or his spending policies. The main causes behind this round of global inflation are the supply-chain disruptions caused by the global pandemic, which are affecting every country, and the Russian war against Ukraine.

Would we be happier if we were living with Europe's inflation rate? Not much — and we would be coping with much higher unemployment. Whatever else is said about the Biden economic plan, he has succeeded in driving unemployment down to the lowest level in 50 years, at roughly 3.6 percent. That is a historic jobs boom, resulting in higher wages for the lowest-paid workers in our economy.

Meanwhile, unemployment across the European Union is now around 6.2 percent. Higher prices harm working families, but buying the necessities is far more challenging when the family's breadwinners are out of work.

So perhaps one percent or a little more of the present inflation rate can be attributed plausibly to the American Rescue Plan. But that spending did nothing to raise gas or food prices, both vulnerable to the effects of pandemic and war. And when Republicans complain about the inflationary impact of Biden's economic program, someone should ask what they plan to do about the problem if and when they regain power. They appear to have no answer.

In fact, Sean Hannity, Trump's favorite Fox News host, had the temerity to pose that question to the former president last week. "If you're president, what would you do?" asked Hannity, after framing his query with a damning denunciation of Biden and the economy.

"So what you're saying sounds all very easy and sounds very simple, not actually that simple," Trump began, careening into a long, indeed very long reply that was full of self-praise but empty of an actual answer to his fanboy's question. Because he has no answer.

Now, Trump rarely offers any coherent response on policy issues, which is one of the reasons that he abolished the Republican platform altogether in 2020. What about his fellow partisans on Capitol Hill, whose midterm campaign rides on voter anger over inflation? Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, recently released an 11-point program that mostly consists of hollow culture war rhetoric rather than concrete proposals. (One of his brilliant ideas is to complete the border-wall boondoggle, at enormous cost, and name it after Trump.)

Scott has no answer to inflation — which his program doesn't even mention — but he does want to raise tax rates for working families that earn too little to pay federal income taxes now. And then there's Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, another leading Republican voice, who recently clogged up border crossings with a "truck inspection" stunt. He wanted to make a point about immigration, but only succeeded in driving up the price of food imported from Mexico and harming industries in his own state.

No, the Republicans only have one idea: Scream about Joe Biden, and hope voters don't realize they have no plan and no clue until after Election Day.

To find out more about Joe Conason, editor-in-chief of The National Memo, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

President Biden delivering remarks on the American Jobs Plan at the Carpenters Pittsburg Training Center.

Don't Look Now, But The Biden Economy Just Happens To Be Glorious

If Joe Biden takes office, there'll be a "depression the likes of which you've never seen," Donald Trump warned a month before he lost the 2020 presidential election. It didn't happen.

You know that, right?

Also, your 401(k) surely did not "go to hell," as the previous guy predicted. On the contrary, stocks in the S&P 500 are up 26 percent as the first year of the Biden presidency is about to end.

How good is that? "U.S. financial markets are outperforming the world by the biggest margin in the 21st century" is how Bloomberg News put it.

The U.S. gross domestic product is expected to have grown an extraordinary 5.6 percent this year, according to economists. And that's after adjusting for inflation.

The unemployment rate is down to 4.2 percent. Retail sales in the recent Christmas shopping season rose eight percent from the same period last year — the biggest gain in 17 years.

As Bloomberg summed it up, "America's economy improved more in Joe Biden's first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years."

And so how do we explain Biden's lackluster approval ratings, weirdly depressed by discontent on how he's managing the economy? The reasons include distorted media coverage of the economy, a Republican opposition that doesn't want to give Democrats credit, and Democrats who don't want to give themselves credit (and for wholly neurotic reasons).

Now, as always, there are economic concerns. Inflation has been cutting into the good news of fattening paychecks for American workers. However, the bubbly retail numbers point to consumers with the means to spend and happy to do it. That consumer credit grew a record 27 percent in Biden's first year reflects public confidence about the future.

The supply chain blockages seem to be easing, as witnessed in the fake news of bare store shelves this shopping season. The difficulty in getting parts and products shipped from Asia has raised interest in bringing manufacturing back into this country, and that is a good thing.

The biggest driver of inflation, oil prices, could very well be headed down. "Much needed relief for tight markets is on the way," according to the International Energy Agency. The simple reason is rising oil production. Helping matters was Biden's planned release of 50 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic reserves, with similar steps being taken in other countries.

Why Democrats don't shout hosannas for this basically strong economy has long been a mystery. One explanation is that some of the loudest voices in the party, mainly on the left, engage in a culture of complaint. The lefties obsess angrily on what isn't being done for the poor and ignore what is.

They've been hollering at West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin for blocking passage of the current Build Back Better plan, even though it is they who screwed it up. All hope is not lost, though. Democrats can trim their overweight wish list, thus avoiding such cheesy tricks as financing the child tax credit for just one year. Manchin does have a point.

The programs most worth saving are universal preschool, strengthening the Affordable Care Act, and fighting climate change. A plan costing $1.8. trillion — a number Manchin has reportedly said he would consider — would still be bold under any previous definition of the word.

Stock market gains do benefit the better-off, but lots of average people have some skin in the game. Sweden has more billionaires per capita than we do while maintaining a dream of a social safety net.

There's nothing wrong with prosperity. "Happy Days Are Here Again" was the campaign song for Franklin D. Roosevelt — just before he launched the New Deal.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.