ICYMI: New York Times: "Morning in America"

In an editorial today, Binyamin Appelbaum explains how President Biden's policies rescued our economy and are investing in America after decades of neglect. The President's agenda is delivering strong, shared growth after years of failed trickle-down economics, with the most equitable recovery in history; wages 2.8% higher than before the pandemic—14 times stronger than any other G7 country; unemployment below 4% for 23 months in a row; and businesses investing more than $640 billion in manufacturing and clean energy. Those policies helped our economy create 2.7 million jobs last year—instead of the recession that convention wisdom predicted. While Congressional Republicans want to continue trickle-down giveaways to the wealthy and big corporations that offshored jobs and hollowed out the middle class, President Biden's economic policies "hold the promise of opening a new era of prosperity."

Read more below:

New York Times (Opinion): Morning in America
[Binyamin Appelbaum, 1/8/24]

[I]t is Mr. Biden's reinvigoration of the government's role as the nation's most important investor that may endure as a turning point in the nation's political and economic history.

[…] Government investment plays a critical role in the nation's economy. It provides the means to develop ideas that aren't yet ready for the market, the power to turn ideas into products, the roads to deliver goods to consumers. America's prosperity in the late 20th century was the harvest of its investments after World War II. The economic malaise of the last few decades is equally a product of the failure to continue making new investments.

Federal spending on research and development, measured as a share of the nation's economic output, declined to the lowest level in half a century in 2017.

During the Biden administration, it has begun to rise again.

[…] Mr. Biden is articulating a simple, strong contrast: Republicans believe that collecting less money in taxes will catalyze economic growth; Bidenomics "is rooted in what's always worked best for the country: investing in America and investing in Americans," as the president put it in a November speech in Northfield, Minn.

[…] Federal aid shielded millions of American families from destitution, hunger and the loss of their homes, and it spurred a recovery that has far outstripped the post pandemic rebounds in other developed democracies. In the third quarter of 2023, real wages in the United States were 2.8 percent higher than in the third quarter of 2019. Among the other six members of the Group of 7 developed democracies, the next best performer was Canada, where real wages were 0.2 percent higher in the third quarter of 2023 than before the crisis. In the other five countries, real wages still had not rebounded completely.

[…] The Biden administration also has used its regulatory powers to distribute prosperity more evenly. Mr. Biden has championed a revival of antitrust enforcement aimed at curbing the market power of large corporations. He has supported labor unions more vocally than any of his predecessors, becoming the first president to walk a picket line when he joined striking workers outside a Michigan auto plant.

The Biden administration has engineered a historic increase in the value of food stamps, proposed a ban on noncompete agreements, which hold down wages, and forgiven billions of dollars in student loans, among other measures aimed at reducing economic inequalities.

[…] In 1984 [Reagan's] campaign aired a famous ad declaring that it was "Morning Again in America." Mr. Biden has grounds for making the same claim. His economic policies, if they are carried forward, hold the promise of opening a new era of prosperity.