The facts don’t bear out Trump’s doomsaying — at least in economic terms
In a memorable election debate with President Jimmy Carter on Oct. 28, 1980, GOP nominee Ronald Reagan asked Americans: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
Amid the stagflation and rising unemployment of the time, many were not. So Reagan went on to turn Carter into a one-term president. Reagan even won the popular vote (unlike Donald J. Trump in 2016). And he went on to serve two terms.
That “better-off” question is rising again, of course (as it often has in presidential races). As one might expect, Fox News has bruited it, citing a poll the outlet took last spring that suggested 52% of voters felt worse off. Still, in a poll a bit later by The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College, the outlook was similar, as more than half of registered voters in six battleground states rated the economy as “poor.” Many Americans even wrongly think we’re in recession.
Like many of those voters, some of my relatives are answering “No” to the “better-off” question, saying they felt richer during the Trump years than they have during the Biden-Harris term. And a libertarian friend argued the same point, contending that the reasons many Americans back Trump are not based in racism or sexism, but rather on economics. They just don’t think Democratic policies have helped them, he said.
But are we, in fact, better off? Do the data substantiate or undercut the often-partisan feelings, deeply felt as they may be?
Without seeing their tax returns, of course, we can’t know whether certain individuals have fared better or not since January 2021. We don’t know how their businesses have done or how they have coped if they are on fixed incomes (though Social Security boosts for costs of living of 8.7% in 2023 and 3.2% this year may have helped).
But we can explore the so-called national “vibecession” to see if it is based in facts or is just a matter of hazy memories. And recall that some of those memories have been demagogically reinforced by Trump’s inaccurate bravado about overseeing the greatest economy in world history.
“Nostalgia’s rosy glow makes almost all presidents more popular after they leave office,” Los Angeles Times journalist David Lauter writes. “[T]hat effect may have been especially sharp this time because the steep inflation of 2021 and 2022 caused voters to fondly recall the good economy of Trump’s first three years in office; and younger voters may have only vague memories of Trump controversies that took place in their teenage years.”
Certainly, we must concede that inflation has been a bear, especially for lower-income folks:
Indeed, because higher prices are baked in, it may not help former Vice President Kamala Harris that inflation has moderated substantially this year. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Sept. 11, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers rose just 0.2% on a seasonally adjusted basis in August, the same increase as in July. Over the last 12 months, the all-items index increased just 2.5% before seasonal adjustment.
It also may make little difference to voters that presidents don’t control inflation and can only modestly influence it. Reining in price hikes is the province of the independent Federal Reserve, which is poised to lower interest rates for the first time in four years because of recent progress on the price front. The rollback could make housing and other things more affordable for many, though not for a while yet.
Despite that, of course, Trump has trumpeted inflation as a reason Americans should elect him. He knows all too well that a price spiral has cost incumbent presidents — notably Carter and Gerald Ford — the White House. It helped Reagan to get in, too, so Trump understandably figures it could be a winning issue for him.
What’s more, real incomes haven’t been growing much. As polls expert Nate Silver writes, real disposable personal income, basically how much money people have left after taxes and inflation, is historically one of the best predictors of election outcomes. And it’s been flat during Biden’s tenure: people’s incomes aren’t growing much. Part of that, he notes, was due to spikes caused by COVID stimulus spending — but even over the past year, it’s barely kept up with population growth:
But to maintain that things haven’t been getting better economically — overall — is simply false. If one looks at gross domestic product, for instance, the trend line has been markedly up:
And unemployment rates reflect gains, too. Recall that Trump’s term was marked by a Covid-induced recession that lasted from February to April 2020 (hardly the sort of thing one can look back on fondly). After Trump left the Biden-Harris team a jobless rate of 6.4% in January 2021, the climb back economically challenged the Democrats. It took the labor market a bit less than two years to recover to pre-recession levels. Now, we’re just above historic lows in joblessness, with a 4.2% national rate.
Moreover, one’s feeling of well-being has a lot to do with housing costs and prices. And for homeowners, times could scarcely be better, at least insofar as their wealth is tied to the value of their homes (the story is different, of course, for renters and would-be home buyers):
To point to just one example, the home of my relatives in suburban Jackson, New Jersey, is now worth $570,000, a good bit more than the $120,000 they paid in 1990 (and that $120K equals $296,500 today, so they’ve had dramatic inflation-adjusted gains), according to Redfin. By that measure alone, they are much better off than in the past.
But much of that data above is backward looking. At the moment, it seems, many consumers are hardly feeling impoverished, and some are beginning to believe Harris would be a better choice than Trump on the economic front.
“Consumer sentiment was essentially unchanged for the fourth consecutive month, inching up 1.4 index points,” the director of the much-watched University of Michigan consumer survey reported in an early assessment of August survey results. “With election developments dominating headlines … sentiment for Democrats climbed 6% in the wake of Harris replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee for president. For Republicans, sentiment moved in the opposite direction, falling 5% … Sentiment of Independents, who remain in the middle, rose 3%.”
“The survey shows that 41% of consumers believe that Harris is the better candidate for the economy, while 38% chose Trump,” survey director Joanne Hsu writes. “Overall, expectations strengthened for both personal finances and the five-year economic outlook, which reached its highest reading in four months….”
Of course, big-picture facts may matter little to folks who are convinced the past was better. Indeed, with its Make America Great Again theme, the Trump candidacy is based on a rosy view of the past, one that under scrutiny seems beyond saccharine and, for many Americans, is just inaccurate. His negativism, with comments such as “we are a nation in decline,” play well with some, but will they with most?
To be sure, there is plenty of reason to be concerned about various social pathologies in the United States — school shootings come to mind first and foremost. Despite my libertarian friend’s view that racism and sexism are well back in the country’s rear-view mirror, moreover, many Americans are concerned about such ingrained traits in our national psyche — even if we have had progress there.
“Voters overall have mixed views of the impact of Harris’ gender and race and ethnicity on her candidacy,” a recent report by the Pew Research Center finds. “More say the fact that Harris is a woman and that she is Black and Asian will help her than hurt her with voters this fall. Somewhat more voters see Harris’ gender as a potential negative (30%) than see her race and ethnicity this way (19%).”
“Harris supporters are far more likely than Trump supporters to say the vice president’s gender and race will be a liability,” the report continues. “More than twice as many Harris supporters (42%) as Trump supporters (16%) say the fact that Harris is a woman will hurt her with voters. Fewer Harris supporters think her race and ethnicity will be a hindrance (31%), but just 8% of Trump supporters say the same.”
With comments such as “she happened to turn Black,” Trump is doing his best to rouse the racists among his devotees while trying to undercut Harris’s support among Blacks. Certainly, Trump doesn’t seem to be succeeding in the latter regard, with some 82% of Black voters “definitely” or “probably” in her corner, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.
In the end, to the extent that Harris can get people to focus on facts, she may even persuade some that things have been getting better, Trump’s incessant focus on the negative notwithstanding. And there’s a decent shot things will get even better going forward. Focusing on a sunny future — America as a “shining city on the hill” — helped Reagan. Might that work for Harris, too?