Political Economy Media Malpractice

A big problem for Joe Biden, as I’ve repeatedly noted, is that families are on an economic treadmill.

Simply stated, inflation has been climbing as fast (or sometimes faster) than wages.

That’s not a recipe to make a politician popular.

Now there’s some new data that is further bad news for Biden. Not only are wages and salaries flat after adjusting for inflation, but so it net worth.

I’m motivated to share this data because Ezra Klein has a column in the New York Times that examines seven reasons why Biden is in political trouble.

Much of the analysis is very reasonable (Is Biden too old? Is there an anti-incumbent mood? etc).

But the economy was also on the list, and Klein compares Biden and Reagan in an attempt to argue that Biden is doing a better job than people think

In the Times-Siena poll, 21 percent of voters say the economy will drive their vote, while 7 percent say inflation is their top issue. …Biden’s numbers aren’t following the pattern we’ve seen with other recent presidents. …Biden’s recovery is stronger than what…Reagan…saw. In 1984, inflation was higher than it is now, unemployment was higher than it is now and the interest rate on a 30-year mortgage was above 13 percent — almost double what it is now. …Yet Biden is polling worse than Reagan…at this point in their re-election bids.

I already wrote a column (last November) showing that Reagan produced better results, but that’s not the part of Klein’s column that deserves the most criticism.

The silliest part of his analysis is that he simply looks at a moment in time and ignores context. Here are the two things to understand.

1. Inflation and interest rates were very high when Reagan took office and he made the tough policy choices that put those variables on a downward trajectory.
2. Inflation and interest rates were very low when Biden took office and he pursued policies that put those variables on an upward trajectory.

I imagine Klein fully understands that this context is important. But because he leans to the left, he is following the usual media strategy of trying to make Biden look good.

P.S. Regarding jobs, Biden took office while the economy was still dealing with government-mandated shutdowns, so his job numbers seem to look good, but not when compared to the pre-pandemic trend.

P.P.S. Biden and his supporters could point out that bad monetary policy began under Trump, but they don’t have much credibility since they supported the bad monetary policy and allowed it to continue after he became president.

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Image credit: Gage Skidmore | CC BY-SA 2.0.