Stephen Moore’s Committee to Unleash Prosperity Hotline is a must-read resource for anyone tracking the intersection between politics and the economy. In addition to the articles and commentary by Steve and the CTUP Board and contributors, such as Arthur
Laffer, Larry Kudlow and our old friend Raph Benko, the charts in the Hotline and committeetounleashprosperity.com website are an invaluable resource for economic data in easy-to-understand graphics.
Yesterday’s hotline had one of the best set of charts we’ve seen addressing the question crucial to any presidential reelection: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
The answer to that question, as illustrated by Steve’s take-home pay charts is: On Real Take-Home Pay, Trump Crushes Biden
Which recent President has helped the middle class the most? And which has hurt the middle class the most, asked Steve Moore?
Mr. Moore’s analysis is that one of the best measures is real take-home pay for the median-income family - i.e., those right smack dab in the middle of the income spectrum.
Here are the results based on the official Census Bureau data. Trump has the best record. Biden by far the worst.
Amazingly, median income rose more in Trump's four years in office than under Bush, Obama, and Biden COMBINED! And this analysis includes the lockdown year of 2020, which happened under Trump, when incomes collapsed because the economy shut down for almost half a year.
Since Trump only served one four-year term and Bush and Obama served two four-year terms (and the Biden numbers are for half his term), it is also meaningful to look at these four Presidents' records per year in office. Annualized, the middle class did twice as well under the Trump years than under the Obama years. And families have lost income under Biden so far.
And that is the reason why Democrats are so squeamish about talking about the economy, especially after Biden’s much-criticized State of the Union address in March.
Indeed, the New York Times yesterday enlisted Democrat flack Paul Krugman to rebut the notion that the middle class is hurting under Biden:
The Washington Post’s editorial board just wrote that “Telling Americans the economy is good won’t work.” The Financial Times’s editorial board wrote that “The president’s state of the nation address in March was littered with superlatives about the economy” but that his messaging “risks negating the experience of voters on the ground” — basically saying that Biden shouldn’t talk about his economic achievements, even implying that he should try to relate to voters by acknowledging that the economic picture out there is bad, which it isn’t.
If you derive your income from the growth in the stock market the economy probably does look good, but if you are an average American wage earner you’ve lost a lot of ground under Joe Biden and the Democrats. So, the next time Joe Biden or one of his Democrat allies claims, as he did last month that, “America has the best economy in the world,” ask him about how take-home pay is doing on his watch.
2024 Election
Donald Trump economy
Joe Biden economy
inflation
real wages
cost of living
take home pay
middle class take home pay
census bureau data
median income
2020 COVID lockdowns
Biden SOTU address
Stock Market
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