Britain’s conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli famously said: “There are lies, damnable lies, and statistics.” Last night, Trump’s SOTU reality TV campaign speech proved all three descriptions to be true.
By contrasting the last three years of the Obama economy to the first three years of Trump, the facts* are startling:
1. Slower average monthly job growth under Trump : 227k vs. 191k
2. Real wages barely rising : 1.1% vs. 0.6%
3. GDP growth basically the same: 2.4% vs. 2.5%
Democrats should hammer Trump every day on the true state of the real economy for working middle class Americans every day from now until November 3.
*Source : Economist Steve Rattner on MSNBC Morning Joe 2/5/2020
The unemployment rate was at 10 percent in President Obama’s first year in office. He left office at 4.7 percent.
Since then it has dropped to 3.5 percent.
The trend has continued.
Absolutely true. Some candidates for President are.
The problem is that to do this, you cannot say that Obama caused a great recovery from which Trump is now benefitting. You have to admit that the “recovery” was always false and only a somewhat of a recovery for the 25-30% of the country that owns stock. For everyone else, it has been low-paid gig work and rising health care costs.
We have to unhug Obama on this if we want to make the case.
Wrong. The Obama recovery benefitted average working middle class Americans while the obscene Trump tax giveaway benefitted the top 1%.
It’s the same hollow “recovery” with a lower unemployment rate driven by gig jobs and people having 2-3 tenuous jobs instead of 1 solid well-paying job. The wage growth is low for the level of unemployment and not something people feel, especially as their insurance premiums and deductibles continue to rise.
The employment numbers would obviously slow as things get lower. As Tcostigan points out, it went from 10% to 4.7% in the Obama years. To continue the same pace would mean that it would have to be negative by now. Obviously that is ridiculous. The change in rate will slow as it gets closer to zero.
Trump’s tax cut probably juiced a bit more out of the recovery and certainly shifted the benefits to the wealthier. That’s why you see sustained stock market growth despite little change in the “real economy.”
The fact is that the Obama “recovery” was hollow for most Americans and this is a continuation of that.
Some of us can admit that and others can never take off the Party glasses to see anything clearly.