*** 'They quietly did their job': Hayes on the truth about Biden’s economic recovery ***
Good Evening from New York, I'm Chris Hayes. We're just a few weeks from the 1st votes, actual votes being cast in the early nominating contest for the Presidential Election.
1 of the main points of discussion, central focuses heading into this election, centers around the economic well-being of our country. That's because generally speaking how people feel about the economy writ large is largely predictive of how an incoming president will perform if they run for election.
A lot of people notice there's a strange paradox at the center of our economy, which is that if you look at many not most of the empirical metrics, the economy is doing surprisingly well.
If you do it economic sentiment, how people feel about the economy, the numbers are near historically pessimistic. There is a real gap between how the economy is actually doing, at least based on most of the measurements we normally use. & how people think the economy is doing.
Or, I should say, at the very least, how they tell pollsters they feel about it. You can see it here on this chart (IN YOUTUBE VIDEO). The blue line, how you would expect people would feel about the economic numbers in the red line, how they actually feel, they're usually in sync.
When things get worse, people feel worse, when better people feel better. Right now there is a huge gulf between them. That gulf, it's worth noting, does not exist in similar wealthy countries like France & Germany & the UK. It's only here. Even though we're doing a lot better than those places. & because of this, at this huge debate has broken out about how to explain this fundamental gap.
1 argument is that people feel so badly about the economy because, well, they're still frustrated by the experience of the last 2 years or that there are certain things, like housing prices right now, that's still very high. It's true. Prices are high right now. That's hard. Others argue that Americans are just getting inundated with negative messaging about the economy. I've got to say I'm very invested in understanding this phenomenon.
But it's worth taking a step back to look at the actual economic record of the incumbent president. What sort of circumstances has he inherited? What has he accomplished independent of the public perception? Let's look at how we got to where we are now.
The theme of the Biden Presidency has been inheriting a succession of essentially unprecedented crises, crises that have afflicted the entire world & have produced way worse economic outcomes in other peer countries. The source of all this, the original source is that we had a once in a century pandemic, globally, that killed millions of people, (under Trump) shut down most of the world economies, shut down entire industries, & then we tried to come back out of it. Now as President you get credit for things when things are good, to get blamed with things are bed. Even if they're out of your control in both directions.
We saw this in 2019 when Donald Trump had done essentially nothing to help the economy, in fact did his best to hurt it with massive tax cuts for the wealthy corporations in the ridiculous trade war. But he still presided over an economy that was finally recovering after a financial crisis a decade later & he got credit for it. We also saw it in 2020, to a certain extent, when COVID annihilated the U.S. economy & the incumbent president, Donald Trump, lost.
Once Biden took over, basically from the moment he was sworn in, we became inundated with negative messaging about the economy. Some of it, a lot of it, was rooted in real crises the administrative had to tackle, in a lot of it was overhyped. This collective freak out about the freak out happened across the ecosystem but was most pronounced on FOX NEWS.
I think it's worth taking a look at what exactly Americans have been hearing about the economy over the past 3 years & compare that with the actual circumstances, & crucially, how the Biden White House responded.
Let's start with the big issue of workers. Biden took office amid an unprecedented global pandemic. Remember, there was not even a widely available vaccine when he was sworn in. As a result, the Biden Admin continued the economic stimulus, they passed on a party line vote, the
American Rescue Plan, Huge, Huge amount of aid to families directly, including additional direct cash payments, additional $300/week in unemployment benefits. This was a big risk. FOX's response to labor shortages, which were real, amid a deadly pandemic, was that suddenly nobody wanted to work anymore.
(This is called right/far right inflammatory language from Republicans & FOX News. ground.news marks this as low factuality/mixed factuality) -
* Biden created a labor shortage because he gave workers way too much free money. 183,000 People dropped out of the labor force.
*Biden created a labor shortage
* labor shortage (Republicans & FOX News repeated it over & over again)
* An 81-year old woman pitches in during the nationwide labor shortage
* they're bringing out robots. Some businesses had trouble finding workers because of the Delta Variant hit that summer & more than hundred thousand people were still being hospitalized every week.
But what happened? The Biden Admin continued its vaccination campaign (while republicans campaigned against it). The virus subsided to a point where people were comfortable going to work in person. Equally is important, the bold agenda of economic stimulus really worked. Unemployment rates dropped massively from 6.3% when President Biden took over to 3.9% in the last Jobs Report. (Charts are in video). People definitely wanted to work. It's a hot job market. Now that the numbers improved & it was apparent that people did want to work, FOX mostly moved of the subject.
There was a new boogie man - the supply chain. These issues were real. Again, especially in the aftermath of COVID, which disrupted just about everything. FOX took the opportunity, starting will the way back in 2021, spinning the end Biden was responsible to the supply chain issues & apparently did it to ruin Christmas for America's children.
(This is called right/far right inflammatory language from Republicans & FOX News. ground.news marks this as low factuality/mixed factuality):
* The Christmas presents you want? Probably stuck on a ship somewhere.
* Economist are warning many Christmas presents for your kids, they're not gonna arrive on time.
* Holidays a bit harder this year for many Americans, thanks to Joe Biden. (Republicans mimicked the same BS over & over again).
But months before FOX Started its latest war on Christmas, Biden had put on the task force to combat the supply chain issues. By Fall he announced the portal will be working 24/7 to clear the backlog as well as additional investment for UPS synthetics to make sure packages got moving. By November the heads of a bunch of major retail companies were shouting from the rooftops that there was no supply chain issue affecting Holiday shopping. In fact, Holiday spending in 2021 grew nearly 15% from the year before, shattering all kinds of records. Crisis averted, the presents were under the tree.
To be clear, it wasn't just Christmas presents. Early last year, Biden admin was dealing with a very real scary shortage of Baby Formula. Together they formed another plan to increase supply & fix allocation issues, which were caused both by a shattered factory & a product recall. The White House declared production increase year over year under their watch.
By October, Shell Stocks were back where they were before the crisis started. By this point Biden's been President for 2 years. The midterm elections were approaching. Republicans didn't have a ton 2 run on, especially after that Dobbs Decision struck down Abortion Rights. They're best hope, the central hope, was the economy & inflation, which really had been spiking for a whole bunch of reasons, including around the world, & partly because of the chicken flu that killed chickens, was well as the lingering repercussions of the pandemic. FOX News did its best to act as the messaging of the Republican Party, spending day after day talking about eggs.
(This is called right/far right inflammatory language from Republicans & FOX News. ground.news marks this as low factuality/mixed factuality).
* Egg prices for the month of December, up 60%
* Eggs now through the roof
* Eggs are so expensive, no more Easter Eggs.
Inflation is an interesting case in that it wasn't about broader inflation. In 2022, an Avian Flu killed tens of millions of egg-laying chickens, another example of the supply crunch. Guess what? The ship corrected corps. Farmers raised new chickens, egg prices came back down, your omelet is not in danger. Believe it or not, eggs were not the primary target of Fox's coverage. FOX in the big guns for perhaps the most salient political issue of our time - Gas Prices.
(This is called right/far right inflammatory language from Republicans & FOX News. ground.news marks this as low factuality/mixed factuality).
*Let's talk about the pain at the pump. We're paying some of the highest prices in American History
* Another Record High
* Gas prices through the roof
Inflation specifically at the pump, when you see the prices every day, in theory that should've been a clear attack. Aver all, there was a major land war in Europe & a mass blockade of Russian oil & the oil prices really went up. At 1 point gas was averaging more than $5/gallon. Did Joe Biden Cause this? It doesn't matter.
The single-minded campaign message wasn't particularly effective, especially when being delivered by some truly terrible candidates. The big red wave didn't materialize. So you've got to think that many voters don't blame the Democrats for gas prices even after months of folks putting up stickers on the pumps say Biden did this. Guess what, gas prices are down from their highest national average following a steady decline.
Inflation has cooled dramatically with rates declining from the peak of about last year to about 3.2%. Again, you don't hear FOX News talking too much about the price of gas these days, or the price of eggs, or Christmas presents. And so the story of the Biden Presidency so far has been this series of metaphorical meteors hitting the earth. Unexpected, in many instances, unprecedented, that the White House had to attend. To each one has cost huge cycles of a negative coverage, around the clock panic across media. AND THE BIDEN ADIM HAS ATTEMPTED TO DO SOMETHING WITH THE PROBLEMS IN NEARLY EVERY CASE.
In many cases they saw a real tangible success, which is to say, in most cases they quietly do their job. Then he moved to the next crises. But that's not the message getting from FOX New. They keep fear mongering the entire economy is going to collapse any minute.
(This is called right/far right inflammatory language from Republicans & FOX News. ground.news marks this as low factuality/mixed factuality).
The entire economy is going to collapse any minute
It smells like a recession, walks like a recession, it's a recession. We begin with the Biden recession.
The Biden recession
The auto industry is in recession, retailers in recession, advertising is in recession
That's interesting because she's right at one level. The dismal news is because they're hearing recession, although there's no eminent recession. According to recent survey, business economists, the overwhelming majority of them. (75% of them) do not believe a recession is likely. In fact, the fundamentals of the economy are much sound, more than you might think they are. GDP is absolutely booming. Even more importantly, this is central, real wages are rising. That means wages right now are rising faster than inflation, which means working people have more purchasing power. In fact, the largest wage gains have happened in the bottom 40% of workers. From the bottom up, the certain recession is now far from certain. It may even appear unlikely, which itself is a minor miracle.
We're left in this weird place where people feel bad about the economy. I'm not telling anyone how to feel or what their finances are. People feel how they feel. If they're stressed. But the weird thing about presidents, the way they're credit blame works is presidents get blamed for the bad stuff, praised for the good. Even when the Feds had more to do with cooling inflation than the White House does. But I also think that from the perspective of economic management, dealing with what's dealt you, Biden isn't getting the praise he deserves. If you were evaluating presidents -- you've got to keep the rules consistent.
Donald Trump's buddies on FOX want to praise him for the great economy from 2017 to 2019 while ignoring the 2020 disaster that unfolded under his watch. They want you to believe Trump's term only lasted 3 years, & then he just disappeared. Before Biden took over, a bunch of bad stuff happened under his watch. The actual record is - Donald Trump oversaw the biggest job loss of any president in American history, along with mass deaths & an abject disaster. You might say that wasn't Donald Trump's fault. Fair enough, but inflation, the supply chain, & eggs, & Russia's invasion of Ukraine, & spiking gas prices & shipping backlogs? Those aren't President Biden's fault either.
But President Biden has gotten the work putting together an economic vision completely opposite of Donald Trump, who cut taxes for corporations & rich people as his signature economic move.
President Biden likes to say he wants an economy from the middle up, from the bottom up, &it's actually produced tangible benefits. More workers unionized.
From youtube.com/watch?v=e1nZv9Lu…
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All liars are of the devil...and we have the power to remove them with the truth..time to act stand enough fake elections and 500 or so liars making bank off the lies of vaccines open borders and giving themself pay raises as they make America weak and broken beyond repair ! rumble.com/v3zeqpm-rtg-radio…
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