For the next three days, you're going to be told that America is still struggling with CARNAGE! - so here's a reminder that this was, and is, bullshit.
This is from the opening of @EasterbrookG's 2018 book, "It's Better Than It Looks."
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This is from the opening of @EasterbrookG's 2018 book, "It's Better Than It Looks."
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"On the November 2016 day Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, unemployment was 4.6 percent, a number that would have caused economists of the 1970s to fall to their knees and kiss the ground."
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"In real-dollar terms, gasoline prices were the same as when teenagers rushed to record stores to but the latest 45-rpm monaural singles. Natural resources and foodstuffs were plentiful. Middle-class wages and household income were rising." /3
"The [U.S.] economy had expanded for eighty-nine consecutive months. Private sector jobs had grown for eighty consecutive months, nearly doubling the previous record of forty-eight months; a net of eight million jobs had been added in less than a decade." /4
"U.S. industrial output was at an all-time record. Inflation had been low for a decade, while mortgage rates and other borrowing costs were at historic lows. Crime, especially homicide, was in long-term decline." /5
Easterbrook makes the case at length, but the point is that millions of Americans - not just Trumpers, but across the board - believed we were in the WORST WORLD EVER, and Trump (and others, like Sanders) grabbed it. Trump made it work better than any of them. /6
Trump will hammer this line again. But this time, the problems he'll bitch about - America's decline in power, the state of the economy, the pandemic's disaster - were *all problems Trump created or made worse*. Good luck with that, Republicans. /7x
