@Jolly said in Summers: Inflation's worse than they're saying:
@LuFins-Dad said in Summers: Inflation's worse than they're saying:
@George-K said in Summers: Inflation's worse than they're saying:
Krugman: Don't believe your wallets, believe our statistics!
Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Honestly, I ))didn’t think Republicans were going to try replaying Ronald Reagan’s famous line, since so much of the G.O.P.’s 2024 strategy depends on a sort of collective amnesia about the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency. Is it really a good idea to remind voters what the spring of 2020 was like?
For it was a terrible time: It was a time of fear, with Covid deaths skyrocketing. It was a time of isolation, with normal social interactions disrupted. It was a time of surging violent crime, perhaps brought on by that social disruption. It was a time of huge job losses, with the unemployment rate hitting 14.8 percent that April. And do you remember the great toilet paper shortag
So people saying that lived experience contradicts the official data haven’t really done their homework. To the extent we can measure Americans’ personal experiences, as opposed to what they say about the economy, it seems to be quite positive and more or less in line with the macroeconomic indicators.
There may be multiple reasons for this disconnect between personal experience and narratives. Partisanship is clearly a major factor: Supporters of both parties tend to be down on the economy when the opposing party holds the White House, but the effect is much stronger for Republicans. Even though inflation has dropped, the inflation surge of 2021-22 may still be weighing on economic perceptions. And for what it’s worth, news reporting on the economy, as measured by the San Francisco Federal Reserve, was extraordinarily negative last summer, comparable to the depths of the Great Recession, although it has been more positive recently.
Whatever has been going on, it’s important to understand that the political challenge facing Democrats is not that they have to overcome a bad economy. What they need to overcome instead is the false narrative that the economy is doing badly.
How can they do this? I’m not a political strategist, but even I can see that telling voters that their perceptions are skewed would come across as condescending. But reminding them just how bad 2020 was and arguing that President Biden, who inherited an economy and a society badly damaged by the pandemic and has led us through the aftermath to a much better place, just might work.
Krug’s right on one thing. Tie COVID around Trump’s neck. If I was Biden’s campaign manager, I would have them saying “Why do groceries cost so much?” Then show that M1 Supply chart. “Why are interest rates so high?” Then show the M1 Supply chart. Then I would show Trump repeatedly calling for more stimulus checks. Then I would run a scroll of every approved Paycheck Protection Program recipient and amount.
Let's point out a thing or two I think Americans will remember... Trump was dealing with a very nasty virus, effective treatments unknown at first. I well remember the D word being thrown around by some economists, as people lost their jobs and income. Trump probably spent too much money and I'm sure the waste (as it is in any government program, but especially an emergency program) was enormous.
Was Biden in the same position as Trump? The two presidents spent somewhat the same and have had a similar toll on the national debt. I submit that early in Biden's term, he got lucky...The disease began to have a lower mortality rate.. The COVID of 2021, was not the COVID of 2019. Plus, testing began to catch up, some medical supply chains eased and we started to have treatment regimens that were better than when the virus first appeared.
Lastly, as Jon has pointed out on multiple occasions, what happens on a president's watch belongs to him. That's not fair, but it's reality. The American people blame Biden for inflation, not Trump.
The PPP Act was an abomination. Not one single contingency for if a business ultimately didn’t need the loan. There were many businesses that made RECORD profits between March 20 and March 21, whose employees were as effective working from home, that had their payroll covered by the US Taxpayer. And those employees, receiving full pay courtesy of the US Taxpayers also received the equivalent of unemployment payments at $15 per hour for nothing. With no need. That was insane and we will always pay that price, but that was far from the worst of it.
