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Views of economy so much malarkey

To the editor:

There seem to be four main reasons some people are planning to vote for Donald Trump: To make liberals cry, because they like racism, because they’re single-issue pro-life evangelicals or because of the “strong” economy. Now those first two voter types are lost souls. There’s no reasoning with people like that, so I won’t try.

As for evangelicals, if you’re willing to sacrifice everything you’ve ever claimed you stand for to give a lying, cheating, bigoted, self-serving, church-avoiding, Bible-pandering, anti-Jesus (who, let’s face it, has definitely paid for an abortion or two in his time) the highest office in the world just to try to undermine one Supreme Court decision, it’s unlikely logic will impact your judgment. So let’s focus on the fourth subject of his supporters: The it’s-the-economy-stupid voter.

The working theory among these voters is that the economy is either verging on greatness or has already achieved such. This, however, is (as my preferred candidate might call it) so much malarkey. I’ll elaborate.

GDP, job creation, unemployment, median income, the deficit and the stock market: These are the traditional indicators by which an economy is measured. Let’s compare Trump’s economy with Barack Obama’s in each of these traditional barometers. It’d be unfair to consider the economy since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., so we won’t include these past months. Similarly, it’s not fair to judge the early years of Obama’s administration as he was struggling to overcome the Bush recession (and doing a spectacular job of it, but still …) So for fairness’ sake, we’ll only look at the last three years of Obama’s tenure and the first three years of Trump’s.

Under Obama, GDP rose on average 2.4 percent for those three years (which Trump called terrible), but in Trump’s first three years it rose only 2.5 percent on average, although he promised 6 percent and more. Eight million jobs were created in Obama’s last three years. In Trump’s first three, only 6.5 million. Between 2014 and 2016, Obama brought unemployment down by two full points from just over 6 percent to just over 4 percent. It came down between 2017 and 2019 to 3.6 percent, not even a full point. During that period, real median household income grew 5.8 percent under Obama, but only 2.7 percent under Trump. Next, the deficit: Obama ballooned it by 74 percent during the entire eight-year course of his presidency. Trump matched that in just three years. Finally, stocks: The DJI Obama inherited in freefall rose 17 percent in his last three years. In his first three years, the booming Dow Trump inherited rose 31 percent, but mostly in his first year (20 percent). Since then it’s risen and fallen more regularly than a Manhattan elevator, and most economists foresee another recession, which probably only hasn’t happened yet because the Fed is using $75 billion in COVID relief funds to buy junk stocks.

You don’t have to believe me, though. Check my math. Check my facts. Then vote Biden/Harris 2020.

J. David Core

Toronto

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