'Why We Don’t Feel We Are Better Off Than Four Years Ago'

<https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/09/12/breitbart-business-digest-why-we-dont-feel-we-are-better-off-than-four-years-ago/>

'Why Harris Dodged the Most Important Question of the Debate

The most important moment of the presidential debate this week took
place at the very start.

ABC News debate moderator David Muir asked what might have been the most
predictable question of the night: Are Americans better off than they
were four years ago?

This is a classic question that any incumbent candidate should expect to
be asked. It’s an especially salient question now because polls show
that many Americans are deeply unhappy with economic conditions and
believe their own financial condition is deteriorating.

Ronald Reagan used the question to devastating effect against incumbent
President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 debate.

“Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you
to go buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?” Reagan
asked.

The question on Tuesday night did not come from Donald Trump but from
the moderator.

“Vice President Harris, you and President Trump [sic] were elected four
years ago and your opponent on the stage here tonight often asks his
supporters, are you better off than you were four years ago? When it
comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they
were four years ago?” Muir asked.

We will not burden you with quoting Harris’s answer. If you’d like, you
can read it in the ABC News transcript. It begins with her talking about
her biography (“I was raised as a middle-class kid”) and ends with the
false claim that the tariffs proposed by Trump would amount to a
national sales tax. What it does not do is attempt to address the
question at all.

That’s quite extraordinary. Certainly, the advisers to Harris would have
prepared her for this question, either from the moderators or Trump
himself. How is it she could not provide an answer?

The Problem for Harris Is That We’re Worse Off Than We Were Under Trump
The most charitable answer would be that the Harris campaign decided
that avoiding the question was preferable to answering it because any
honest answer would require admitting that in many ways the America
people are worse off than they were. And the central cause of many of
the economic woes of voters is inflation.

Start with household income. If it weren’t for inflation, the last few
years would look terrific for our incomes. Median household income rose
from $68,700 in 2019 and $68,100 in 2020 to $70,780 in Biden’s first
year in office. The following year it climbed to $74,580. Last year, it
jumped again to $80, 610. (Obviously, this year’s numbers are not yet
available.)

The shadow of inflation, however, changes the picture entirely. In
constant 2022 dollars, real median income was $81,2210 in 2019 and
$79,650 in 2020. In 2021, as inflation took off, it fell to $79,260. The
following year, it declined to $77,540. On the day after the debate, the
Department of Commerce released the 2023 data showing that real median
income had climbed to $80,610, the first time in Biden’s presidency that
the median income had exceeded median income in Trump’s final year, the
year of the pandemic. It’s still below the pre-pandemic level under
Trump.

Three straight years of declining real income—one under Trump, during
the pandemic, and two under Biden—is a rarity. The last time real income
declined at all was a single year in 2014, when it fell from $68,200 to
$67,300. Prior to that, incomes declined from a pre-financial crisis
peak in 2007 through the trough in 2011.

To put it another way, prior to the pandemic hitting in 2020, median
income had been on the rise for five years. When Joe Biden ran on a
platform of restoring the economy in the wake of the pandemic and
growing it “from the bottom up and the middle out,” voters certainly did
not expect they were going to see real incomes continue to fall for
another two years.

Consumer Sentiment Is Worse Now Than During the Pandemic
The University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment reflects the
damage this has done. Four years ago, the index of consumer sentiment
was at 74.1. The consumer expectations subindex read 68.5, while the
current conditions came in at 82.9. The current conditions index had
plunged 21.3 percent from a year earlier due to the onset of the
pandemic.

So, where are we now? The most recent consumer sentiment index reading
came in 67.9, which is 8.3 percent lower than it was in some of the
worst days of the pandemic. In fact, throughout the pandemic year,
consumer sentiment never fell below 70. It’s now been below that level
for four consecutive months.

The expectations index is a bit higher than it was four years ago, at
72.1. But that’s entirely because Republicans are more optimistic
today—with a reading of 56.3—than Democrats were in 2020—when they
registered a score of 46.6. The current conditions reading at 61.3 is
down by a jaw-dropping 26 percent.

There are, of course, some improvements over the past four years. The
unemployment rate was twice as high in August of 2020 than it is today,
for example. But many Americans quite reasonably do not use exactly four
years ago as the baseline—the point of the question isn’t really to ask
about four years ago but to compare progress during a presidential
administration. And the unemployment rate just prior to the pandemic was
lower than it is today, at 3.5 percent. Indeed, unemployment had been
lower under Trump for two years than it is now.

No wonder why Harris did everything she could to talk around the most
important question of this election'