Bidenomics Helped Keep The Economy Good (But It's Still Unfair)

Economist Paul Krugman is right. The U.S. economy is doing very well -- better than any other countries economy. And the laws passed and signed by President Biden helped. Jobs are being created and the unemployment rate is low. The growth of GDP is strong, and the stock market is at a record level. All the normally used indicators say the economy is healthy and growing.

But most Americans are still saying the economy is bad. Although the numbers have improved somewhat, it seems many still think the economy is not good. They are both wrong and right. While the economy is booming, it is still unfair. The rich are doing better than ever, while the middle class struggles to keep up and low-wage workers fall further behind each week. Why?

Prior to 1980, the rising productivity in this country was shared across all economic groups. The rich still got richer, but the middle class and working class also benefitted. But about 1980, the Republicans gained enough power to alter our economic system.

They instituted a "trickle-down" theory of economics - a system that gave more to the rich instead of sharing rising productivity among all groups. They said the once the rich had more it would trickle down and benefit everyone. It sounded good, but didn't work. Instead of letting the extra money trickle down, the rich just kept most of it and laughed all the way to the banks.

Donald Trump made it even worse by imposing tariffs on imported goods and giving the rich huge tax cuts. The effect of Trump actions and Republican policies have created the most unfair economy since before the Great Depression. And sadly, the right-wing is only offering more of the same old failed policies. They want to give more massive tax breaks to the rich, impose even more tariffs (which would raise prices on consumers), make it harder to create or join a union, keep the minimum wage at a poverty level, and take health insurance away from many Americans.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can return to a fair economy that would benefit all Americans. But it won't happen as long as Republicans have enough power to block it.

Remember this on Election Day!

Capitalism Needs A Social Democracy To Benefit All Citizens

Donald Trump has been unable, so far, to find any charge that works against Kamala Harris. He's tried crazy nicknames. He's tried intentionally mispronouncing her name. Nothing has worked. Now he's going for the ridiculous - calling her a "communist".

It isn't even remotely true, but that has never bothered Trump in the past. He will say anything, even an outrageous lie, to get what he wants.

The truth is that Harris is a social democrat. She believes that capitalism must be tempered with regulations and social programs to benefit all citizens.

An unregulated capitalism with government social programs will not work. It will eventually results in a few rich people, a tiny management middle class, and the huge majority of citizens stuck in poverty.

Republicans want you to believe that freeing the rich capitalists from government regulation will allow them to "trickle down" much of their wealth to the rest of the population, thus eliminating the need for any social programs. It's a crazy idea, and it's never worked.

The rich don't want to share their wealth, even though they gained it on the backs of working people. They will always (as we have seen in the past) pay as little as possible to the workers creating their wealth - even if it leaves those workers in poverty.

To prevent this, there are three things needed - regulations, government social programs, and labor unions. These three entities assure that production is shared with everyone and not just hogged by those at the top.

That is not communism. It's not even socialism. It's just common sense capitalism. It allows the rich to get and remain rich, while ensuring that others have what they need to survive in the economy.

National Debt Is Not As Bad As The Hypocritical GOP Claims

 The following is part of an op-ed by economist Paul Krugman in The New York Times:

The United States government is more than $34 trillion in debt. Did you know that our government owes $34 trillion? That’s $34 trillion!

Whenever I write about economic policy, I get a lot of mail and a lot of comments basically asking why I’m not talking more about the national debt. So I thought it might be useful to talk about how I see the issue of public debt and why it doesn’t loom larger in my concerns.

Specifically, let me make three points. First, while $34 trillion is a very large figure, it’s a lot less scary than many imagine if you put it in historical and international context. Second, to the extent debt is a concern, making debt sustainable wouldn’t be at all hard in terms of the straight economics; it’s almost entirely a political problem. Finally, people who claim to be deeply concerned about debt are, all too often, hypocrites — the level of their hypocrisy often reaches the surreal.

How scary is the debt? It’s a big number, even if you exclude debt that is basically money that one arm of the government owes to another — debt held by the public is still around $27 trillion. But our economy is huge, too. Today, debt as a percentage of G.D.P. isn’t unprecedented, even in America: It’s roughly the same as it was at the end of World War II. It’s considerably lower than the corresponding number for Japan right now and far below Britain’s debt ratio at the end of World War II. In none of these cases was there anything resembling a debt crisis. . . .

Bear in mind that governments, unlike individuals, never have to pay off their debt. How did we pay off the debt from World War II? We didn’t. Federal debt when John F. Kennedy took office was slightly higher than it had been in 1946. But debt as a percentage of G.D.P. was way down, thanks to growth and inflation.

So what would it take to stabilize debt as a percentage of G.D.P. for the next 30 years? Bobby Kogan and Jessica Vela of the Center for American Progress, working with Congressional Budget Office numbers, estimate that we would need to increase taxes or cut spending by 2.1 percent of G.D.P.

That isn’t a big number! (Yes, the exact number could be either bigger or smaller, but in either case probably not by enough to change the basic point.) America collects a much smaller percentage of its G.D.P. in taxes than most other rich countries; collecting an extra two percentage points would still leave us a low-tax nation and would be unlikely to hurt the economy. If stabilizing debt seems hard, that’s only because given our deeply divided politics, even modest steps toward responsibility are extremely hard to take.

And by deeply divided politics I mostly mean Republicans, who declaim the evils of debt while pursuing policies that put long-run fiscal sustainability even farther out of reach. In a related analysis, Kogan and Vela estimate that permanently extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts — many of which are scheduled to expire after 2025 — would substantially worsen the fiscal outlook. Yet it’s hard to find Republicans in Congress opposing such an extension.

Worse yet, House Republicans are pushing for drastic cuts in the Internal Revenue Service budget, depriving the agency of the resources it needs to crack down on wealthy tax cheats. That is, even as they yell about budget deficits, they’re both seeking to cut taxes and trying to block efforts to collect the taxes high-income Americans owe under current law.

So politics — specifically right-wing politics — rather than the size of the debt is the problem.

Too Many Americans Don't Understand Economics

The chart above is from a Harris Poll done for The Guardian. It was done between May 10th and 12th of a nationwide sample of 2,119 U.S. adults. 

Sadly, it shows that a huge segment of the U.S. population doesn't seem to understand economics (and that misunderstanding crosses party lines). About 67% of Republicans, 53% of Independents, and 49% of Democrats say the United States is currently in the middle of a recession. IT IS NOT!

Just the opposite is happening - the economy is booming!

I understand that too many Americans are being squeezed by high prices and low wages. But your inability to keep up with the rising prices doesn't mean the country is in a recession. It means you wages are too low thanks to an unfair economy instituted and maintained by Republican officials.

Republican economic policy allows the rich to hog most of the rising productivity and corporations to price-gouge consumers. 

Don't blame President Biden and Democrats. They tried to raise the minimum wage, make it easier to unionize, help with childcare, and reduce poverty - but all those initiatives were killed by Republicans (who only want to keep funneling more money to the rich).

The country is not in a recession and inflation is coming down. But neither helps in an unfair economy. The economy needs to be fixed to benefit all Americans instead of just the rich. But that won't happen as long as Republicans have enough power to block all changes.

Many Are Blaming The Wrong Party For The Unfair Economy

 

Many workers are unhappy with the economy - especially rural workers. They see the rich getting richer while they struggle with an inadequate wage that isn't keeping up with inflation. And they are right. We have a very unfair economy!

But too many of them don't understand why the economy has become so unfair. They believe the lies Republicans are telling them.

Republicans tell them that undocumented immigrants are stealing their jobs. Not true. Those immigrants are taking the dangerous, no benefits, low-paying jobs that Americans don't want. And those immigrants have actually helped the economy by taking those jobs and spending much of the money they earn in this country - boosting the economy. They also pay sales, property, and income taxes (and don't get refunds like citizens).

Republicans tell them that inflation is caused by the budget deficit. Even Republican officials don't believe this, because during the Trump administration they added more to the deficit than during any other administration.

The biggest lie of all is the economic theory Republicans have followed (Trickle-Down economics). Republicans say the answer to our economy is to make sure the corporations and the rich have low taxes and are allowed to make more money. They claim if the rich have more the extra money they have will "trickle down" to the rest of Americans, and everyone will benefit.

But that has never worked, and won't work in the future! While it has been successful in fattening the bank accounts of the rich and the profits of corporations, almost nothing trickles down to anyone else.

In fact, this economic theory is the reason our economy has become so unfair. It has caused a massive redistribution of wealth from the working and middle classes to the rich. The rich now hog all of rising productivity. Before the GOP was able to institute the "trickle-down" theory, rising productivity was shared by all, giving workers a decent living and creating a large and vibrant middle class.

But thanks to the GOP economics, the working class is struggling to keep up with inflation and the middle class is shrinking.

We can fix the economy and make it fair again, but not as long as the GOP has the power to keep their flawed economic theory in place.

Trickle-Down Economics Is A Scam That Only Helps The Rich

 Republicans continue to cling to their "trickle-down" economic theory. They claim that giving more to the rich will trickle down and help everyone. It has never worked. It just fattens the bank accounts of the rich, who do their best to make sure nothing trickles down.

Jennifer Rubin (in The Washington Post) calls it a scam - and she is right. Here's some of what she writes:

The claimed economic benefits of tax cuts for the rich don’t hold up under scrutiny. When Democrats deride tax cuts for the wealthiest as a budget buster and a vehicle for allowing the rich to get richer, Republicans often reply: “But look at the growth and jobs!” Actually, we have seen a steady stream of evidence debunking this rationale. . . .

Last July, NEC Director Lael Brainard laid out the overwhelming evidence that “trickle-down” economics — defined as “cutting taxes for big businesses and those at the top” — has been a bust.

“Economic inequality increased, many communities suffered from sustained disinvestment, and earnings growth for many Americans failed to keep pace with the cost of necessities like health care, housing, and education,” she said. “Investments in infrastructure and vital industries stagnated.”

This isn’t new evidence, either. A 2020 paper by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London examined “18 developed countries — from Australia to the United States — over a 50-year period from 1965 to 2015,” CBS News reported. “The study compared countries that passed tax cuts in a specific year, such as the U.S. in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy, with those that didn’t, and then examined their economic outcomes.” It turns out that “per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and in those that didn’t, the study found.”

But there was one significant difference: “The incomes of the rich grew much faster in countries where tax rates were lowered. Instead of trickling down to the middle class, tax cuts for the rich may not accomplish much more than help the rich keep more of their riches and exacerbate income inequality, the research indicates.” Oops.

Well, what about the huge tax cuts passed by MAGA Republicans in 2017? Were those any different? “Mr. Trump’s tax cuts have lifted the fortunes of the ultra-rich,” the report found. “For the first time in a century, the 400 richest American families paid lower taxes in 2018 than people in the middle class, the economists found.”

But economic growth made up for this handout, right?! Not so fast. Wages for average Americans did not keep up with the cost of living. Worse, “Even before the pandemic, income inequality had reached its highest point in 50 years, according to Census data,” as CBS News reported. And, before Biden came into office, income inequality worsened as the pandemic hurt the less-well-off more severely than it did the rich.

A 2022 update by Hope and Limberg reiterated, “Our findings on the effects of growth and unemployment provide evidence against supply side theories that suggest lower taxes on the rich will induce labor supply responses from high-income individuals (more hours of work, more effort, etc.) that boost economic activity.” Instead, they confirmed there is “strong evidence that cutting taxes on the rich increases income inequality but has no effect on growth or unemployment.”. . .

Sold as a prosperity booster, trickle-down tax cuts for the very rich do not increase prosperity, growth or employment for the average American. This sop to the rich does increase the deficit and income disparity. By contrast, restoring the child tax credit and enacting a billionaire’s tax would continue to narrow the gulf between the very rich and everyone else.

Trickle-down economics is a scam. Renewing tax cuts for the rich that are due to expire at the end of 2025 would do about as much for you as a degree from Trump University.

Trump Would NOT Be Better Than Biden For The Economy!

The chart above is from the CBS News / YouGov Poll -- done between January 10th and 12th of a nationwide sample of 2,870 adults, with a 2.5 point margin of error. 

I was shocked when I saw the results of this poll. About half of adults think they would be better off financially if Trump was president, while only 21% think the same about Biden. And those numbers flip when asked which would make them worse off financially.

How can anyone believe that. Trump was not a good president for the economy. He inherited a very good economy from President Obama, and then proceeded to make it worse.

He started by imposing an import tax on China (and then also put it on other nations). He said his tax would lower the trade deficit the U.S. had with China. It didn't! At the end of his term, the trade deficit was larger than ever before. All his import tax did was make goods more expensive for consumers (and hurt farmers when China retaliated by buying from other countries instead of U.S. farmers).

Trump's only other significant economic action was to pass a huge tax cut. Over 80% of the cut went to the rich and super-rich. And it added more than a trillion dollars to the deficit and national debt -- more than any other president in a single term!

Trump is a believer in the Republican "trickle-down" economic theory, which says that if government funnels more money to the rich it will trickle down and benefit everyone. It's a failed policy. I understand why Trump (and his rich cronies) like it, because it has made the rich much richer. But I don't understand why anyone else would believe in it, because nothing has ever trickled down. The bottom 90% has struggled to keep up with inflation, and the bottom 50% have seen the buying power of their income actually drop.

It seems that inflation is the cause of unhappiness with President Biden. People know it's coming down, but groceries and rents (the most noticeable inflation items) are still high. They are unlikely to ever come down to past prices. The way to help most people economically is to increase the minimum wage (which would put upward pressure on all wages), strengthen unions (which created and sustained the U.S. middle class), and to fully fund Social Security and government programs for the poor.

President Biden supports those measures. Donald Trump opposes them all.

Electing Trump will make sure the rich get much richer, but won't help most others. We need to make sure people understand that voting for Trump is actually voting against their own economic interests!

The Economy Is Great For The Rich But Not For Most Others

Al indicators show the American economy is doing very well. Inflation is down, unemployment remains very low, the Gross Domestic Product is high, the Stock Market is nearing an all-time high, and sales are brisk in this holiday season.

But poll after poll has shown that a significant majority of Americans say the economy is bad. Why the disconnect? Are U.S. citizens just too ignorant to recognize a good economy? Not at all!

The truth is that the economy has reached an epic stage of unfairness. The economy is good for the rich, and great for the super-rich. But the bottom 90% is not feeling the benefits of the good economy. They still struggle with even the low inflation. They have trouble with rising child care and medical/drug costs. And their salaries are not keeping pace.

The real problem is not a bad economy, but an unfair economy -- an economy that only benefits the rich. The gap between the top 10% and the bottom 90% has grown enormous -- surpassing the unfairness of the pre-Depression Gilded Age.

Rep. Ro Khanna is right. It is a mistake for Democrats to just try to convince Americans that they are wrong about the economy. They know better. Instead, Democrats must recognize the unfairness of the economy, and convince voters that they have solutions for that unfairness. If they don't, then voters will do what they normally do in a bad economic situation -- punish the party that occupies the White House.

That would be a mistake, because it's the Republicans that have created the unfairness with their "trickle-down" economic policy -- a policy that promised everyone would benefit from policies that gave more money to the rich. They said it would trickle down and make life better for everyone, but that did not happen. The rich got richer, but no one else benefitted.

Democrats must convince voters that they can make life better for the bottom 90%. And they do have solutions that would do that. 

* They would raise the minimum wage above the current poverty wage (putting upward pressure on all wages). 

* They would save Social Security and Medicare by fully funding them -- not cutting them as Republicans want to do.

* They would help working families by helping to pay child care costs.

* They would make it even easier for Americans to get and keep heal insurance.

* They would make sure the rich pay their fair share of taxes, while refusing to raise taxes on the middle and working classes.

* They would fight the monopolization of businesses, which allows unfair price-gouging.

There are solutions to the unfairness of the U.S. economy, but Democrats must convince the voting public that they have the solutions. If they don't, they could lost in 2024, and that would just make things worse for most Americans -- because the Republicans are still invested in their "trickle-down" version of economics.

Democrats would be making a mistake to just boast about a good economy. They must convince voters they could make the economy fairer and better for everyone.  

Our Inequality Is Causing A Shorter Life Span For Many

The following is part of a thought-provoking post is by Robert Reich:

I want to examine a root that hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves: the remarkable reversal in life expectancy among those without college degrees, many of whom comprise Trump’s base.

In 1900, U.S. life expectancy was 47 years. Infectious diseases routinely claimed babies. Women died in childbirth or from complications arising from childbirth. Many diseases were incurable.

Then came antibiotics, insulin, vaccines, the surgeon general’s report on smoking and cancer — followed by a sharp drop in smoking, the introduction of CT scans and MRIs, and steady improvements in sanitation and water supplies. Poverty and sickness in the elderly were eased by Social Security and Medicare.

Life expectancy in America soared. By 2010, it was approaching 80 years. 

But then something happened — and it happened even before COVID. Life expectancy for most Americans reversed course. 

Why?

Research by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton shows that life expectancy did not reverse course for the 30 percent of Americans with four-year college degrees. 

It reversed for people without college degrees. 

Life expectancy for those with four-year college degrees was 84 years on the eve of the pandemic — up from 79 years in 1992. During the pandemic, their life expectancy slipped a year.

But for those without college degrees, life expectancy has been falling since 2010.

 

In 2010, adult life expectancy for non-college graduates was nearly 77 years. By 2021, it had dropped to under 75 years. (And during the pandemic, their life expectancy dropped 3.3 years.)

Why does this widening gap in life expectancy correlate with whether someone has a four-year college education? 

Because Americans with college degrees have become far wealthier, on average, while those without college degrees have become poorer and less economically secure.

 

In 1990, America’s total wealth was equally split between those with and without college degrees. Today, three-quarters of wealth is owned by college graduates.

Meanwhile, the wages of people without college degrees have stagnated or declined. Average weekly nonsupervisory wages — a measure of blue-collar, non-college earnings — were higher in 1969 (adjusted for inflation) than they are now.

Most Americans without college degrees are now working harder and longer hours than they worked decades ago and taking fewer sick days or vacations. They also have less economic security. Nearly one out of every five American workers is in a part-time job. Two-thirds are living paycheck to paycheck.

 

Income and wealth have direct impacts on health and longevity. They determine access to life-supporting services like high-quality preventive health care, nutritious food, and housing. 

And they have a lot to do with whether someone is subject to life-threatening things like handguns, opioids, and economic stress.

Other developed countries — Japan, Canada, most European countries — have not experienced declining life expectancies among non-college graduates or a widening gap in lifespans between those with four-year college degrees and those without them. 

Why this discrepancy among developed nations?

 

Because other developed nations have stronger and more generous social safety nets. They finance their much less costly health care through government support rather than through what is essentially a flat tax on employment (employer payments for health insurance are effectively taken out of a worker’s salary).

 

And because a far higher percentage of non-college workers in other developed nations are organized into unions that have successfully pushed for higher wages and have enough political clout to resist efforts to erode the safety nets they count on.

Social and economic trends in the United States have fostered an increasingly angry and frustrated working class, highly susceptible to the resentments and grievances of Trumpism.

 

Americans who for decades have been on a downward economic escalator have become easy prey for demagogues peddling the politics of hate.

It's NOT The Economy Getting Worse - It's The Inequality!

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between August 26th and 29th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,303 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 3.2 points, and for registered voters is 3.1 points.

It shows that a clear majority (54% of adults and 53% of registered voters) believes the economy is getting worse. I can understand why Republicans would think that. They don't think the economy can do well unless a Republican is in the White House. But it's not just Republicans -- 63% of Independents and 26% of Democrats also think the economy is getting worse. This flies in the face of the facts.

The truth is the economy is actually doing very well, and getting better. The unemployment rate is below 4%, and has been for many months now. Inflation is falling, and has been for several months now. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is strong, and it looks now like the economy will avoid a recession any time soon. Business profits are up as consumer spending remains strong. Even the Stock Market remains strong and investors are harvesting nice profits.

Those are all the marks of a strong economy. So, why do most Americans think the economy is getting worse?

It's because too many in both the working and middle classes are not getting to share in the improving economy. While the rich are getting much richer, the working and middle classes are struggling just to keep up with inflation (even a smaller inflation).

The problem started back in 1980, when the Republicans were able to seize enough power to change economic policy. Before then, a rise in productivity was shared among most Americans -- even the poor, who saw more generous government programs. The Republicans changed that. They tilted the economic playing field to favor the rich and corporations.

Since then the rich have done very well (with their income rising over 300%) and so have the corporations (with most seeing record profits). They said the increasing wealth of the rich and corporations would trickle down and benefit everyone, but that didn't happen. While the rich got fatter bank accounts, nothing trickled down.

This "trickle-down" economic policy of the GOP has been a spectacular failure for most Americans. It has created a very unequal society, with the gap between the rich and the rest of Americans growing even larger than it was before the Great Depression. 

The economy is good, and growing. But it doesn't look like it to many Americans because they are not sharing in the growing national wealth. To them, it looks like the economy is getting worse, because their own economic situation is getting worse.

It doesn't have to be this way. Democrats want to do things to make the economic system fairer. 

They want to raise the minimum wage to a livable wage. This would not only help those at the bottom, but would put upward pressure on all wages.

They want to make it easier to form a labor union, because the only way workers can have a say in productivity is to band together. Unions created the American middle class and could once again increase it.

They want to make the rich pay their fair share of income taxes. It's just wrong that many, if not most, of the rich pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than most in the middle class. That must be fixed.

There is more that could be done, but just doing these three things would help most Americans, and make the society much fairer.

Sadly, GOP politicians oppose all three. That is why they must be voted out of office in the next election!

Bidenomics Is Working And Will Help Democrats In 2024

The following post is by Robert Reich: 

Until recently, I assumed that Joe Biden would get a second term despite worries about his age because most Americans find Trump so loathsome.

 

But I’ve underestimated Bidenomics. It’s turning out to be the most successful set of economic policies the United States has witnessed in a half-century.

 

It will not only give Joe another term but will also give Democrats control over both houses of Congress. It may even put the nation on the path to widely-shared prosperity for a generation.

Consider what’s been happening to the economy. New economic data last week showed inflation cooled to 3 percent in June, down from over 9 percent last year, and close to the Fed’s goal of 2 percent. 

And as inflation has subsided, real wages — that is, what paychecks will buy — have finally risen. 

Meanwhile, economic growth has accelerated. Consumer spending is solid. Consumers expect the economy to continue to do well. 

Inflation is coming down without a crash landing, in large part because the Fed’s rate increases — designed to slow the economy, stop wage growth, and cause higher unemployment — are being offset by Bidenomics’ massive public investments in infrastructure, semiconductors, wind and solar energy, and manufacturing. 

This isn’t all. The Biden administration has added three other critical ingredients: the threat (and, in some cases, reality) of tough antitrust enforcement, a pro-labor National Labor Relations Board, and strict limits on Chinese imports. 

Taken together, these policies are beginning to alter the structure of the American economy in favor of the bottom 90 percent.

Let me stop here for a moment to point out that there are two separate goals of economic policy. 

The first goal is avoiding inflation or recession — that is, evening out the business cycle (often called achieving “price stability”). 

In recent decades, the Fed has been in charge of this. It’s engaged in a “Perils of Pauline” ride — seeking to offset dramatic economic plunges (stemming from the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009 and then the pandemic of 2020) with zero and even minus-zero interest rates, while trying to offset an equally dramatic post-pandemic surge with the fastest and highest interest rate increases since the early 1980s. 

The second goal is gaining more jobs at higher wages. 

This requires altering the structure of the economy so the poor and working middle class get a larger share of the gains and the ownership class doesn’t continue to run away with the lion’s share.

The distribution of income and wealth doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game in which the rich do better only at the expense of everyone else, and everyone else can do better only if wealth at the top is constrained. 

But power — the power to alter the rules of the game and organize the market to the advantage of those possessing it — is a zero-sum game. It’s exercised only to the extent that others can not. And in modern America, as we all know, great wealth turns into great power.

 

So, getting the poor and working middle class a larger share of the gains requires restructuring the economy in favor of the vast majority that has been losing ground for 40 years and against the monied interests that have been gaining it. 

This restructuring has been difficult to achieve, for the simple reason that the monied interests don’t want it.

In Republican circles, the monied interests have preached the snake oil of supply-side economics, which legitimized giant tax cuts going mostly to the rich and large corporations. 

Those tax cuts — under Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump — exploded the federal debt, fueled giant profits in the biggest firms and financial institutions, and stoked a surge in billionaire wealth but did literally nothing for average working people.

 

In Democratic circles, the monied interests have used neoliberalism — which has called for deregulation, privatization, free trade, and the domination of finance over the economy. This orthodoxy pervaded the Clinton and Obama administrations. (I won’t bore you with my war stories, but trust me.)

The result was similar to the result of supply-side economics: Wealth surged to the top, but average working people remained stuck in the mud.

In contrast to both trickle-down economics and neoliberalism, the Biden administration is focused on altering the structure of the economy. 

Over the past year, manufacturing construction in high-tech electronics, which the administration has subsidized through CHIPS and the Inflation Reduction Act, has quadrupled.

Tens of billions in infrastructure spending has been funneled to the states for road, water system, and internet upgrades. 

More clean-energy manufacturing facilities have been announced in the last year than in the previous seven combined. 

Biden understands that these investments must translate into high-paying jobs, which often require unions. “When I think climate, I think jobs … union workers are the best workers in the world,” he said in a recent speech on Bidenomics. 

The monied interests don’t want unions, of course. The narrow congressional majority that got these bills passed rolled back some of the labor conditions that were originally on the tax credits and grants. 

Moreover, much of the funding is pouring into so-called “right-to-work states” that make it exceedingly difficulty to unionize. 

But a buoyant economy strengthens the hand of workers, making it easier to unionize — which helps explain the ubiquitous labor action this summer.

Voters may not yet understand Bidenomics, but it’s probably not necessary that they do in order for Biden and the Democrats to benefit.

 

If Bidenomics continues to alter the structure of the economy in ways that help the vast majority, voters will give Biden another term and reward Democrats with both houses of Congress.

 

And if Bidenomics is successful, it will make the American economy both stronger and fairer in years to come. 

I’m betting on it.