People Aren’t Crazy for Thinking the Biden Economy Is Bad
There are many good reasons to be unhappy with the economy today: by conventional social democratic metrics like union density, welfare generosity, and public ownership levels, the economy is not in good shape, and recent trends have been mixed at best.
President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, November 30, 2023. (Yuri Gripas / Abaca / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
I have been closely monitoring the recent discourse on the goodness of the economy, and I think I’ve fully mapped it out and understand why it keeps breaking down. What is being presented as an argument about one question is actually an argument about three different questions:
Is the economy good?
Did Joe Biden do a good job with the economy given political constraints?
Why do people say the economy is bad when asked by survey takers?
Each of these questions is interesting when analyzed separately. But when you mush them together without realizing you are doing that, you end up in a rhetorical quagmire that causes frustration and confusion.
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