Anyone remember that John F. Kennedy, in proposing income tax rate cuts, remarked that “a rising tide lifts all boats”? Back in those halcyon days of liberal confidence, one of the complaints liberals had about stodgy old President Eisenhower was that the economy was not growing anywhere near its potential. “Let’s get America moving again” was another of Kennedy’s slogans, and there was a whole doctrine associated with it that went under the banner “growth liberalism.”
But then somewhere in the 1970s, coincident with the rise of environmentalism, liberalism embraced the “limits to growth” and turned away from embracing economic growth. “Let’s get the country moving again” is now fully owned by Trump.
Fast forward to the current times. Economic growth for the last quarter has been revised upward to 4.2 percent, and the Atlanta Federal Reserve is projecting current quarter growth will come in around 4.5 percent or higher. We can debate the drivers of this some other time. Keep in mind that during the Obama years liberals said 4 percent growth was impossible, that 2 percent or less was “the new normal.” Larry Summers told us so! Economist Rob Gordon wrote a doorstop of a book saying that the steady growth of the last 200 years—since the dawn of the industrial revolution—was over, kaput.
So now what are liberals saying? Let’s hand the mic over to Chuck Schumer:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) held a press briefing on Tuesday—one day before the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its second estimate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the second quarter (stating it was 4.2 percent)—at which he stated that Americans “for too long” have been relying “on GDP alone as a bellwether” of how Americans are doing economically.
In other words, change the subject. Schumer and Democrats want to focus on the fact that wages for the working class are not rising as fast as the economy, though wage growth is almost always a lagging indicator in economic cycles. What are they going to say when wages start to catch up, which some signs suggest is starting to happen? It will be fun to watch Democrats say that wage growth numbers are also unimportant, because rich people, or something.
JOHN adds: It strikes me that the principal purpose of the “news” these days is to distract voters from the economy and from the successes the Trump administration has scored in foreign policy, e.g., the serious and potentially crippling blow it has struck to Iran’s mullahs and their patron, Russia.
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