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And while the overwhelming majority of American adults have a steady income and can pay for food, even those who are better-off right now live in a state of perpetual uncertainty, as the political organizer Astra Taylor described in her recent book “The Age of Insecurity.” They rightly fear that they are a layoff or illness away from financial peril.
And work isn’t just about a paycheck. Jobs provide purpose and community. But that can be ripped away instantly in a country where laws make it easy to fire people and the economic structure creates incentives for companies to dismiss hundreds or thousands of workers at a time to raise their stock prices.
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“When we examine society through the lens of insecurity, which affects everyone, as opposed to inequality, which emphasizes two opposing extremes, we can see the degree to which unnecessary suffering is widespread even among those who appear to be ‘winning’ according to the logic of the capitalist game,” Taylor writes.
I read the data about strong job growth. But it’s hard for me to feel positive about the U.S. economy while journalists and tech workers get laid off in droves; teachers and professors quit their jobs, frustrated with Republican politicians undermining their work; and tens of thousands of federal workers face dismissals by former president Donald Trump if he wins the election. And even as the economy is insecure for so many people, billionaires not only have more money than any human would ever need but turn that wealth into power, buying social media platforms and increasing the racist content on them, forcing out presidents of universities and funding campaigns against politicians who try to regulate their businesses.
The average American is better off economically compared with 2010 (after the Great Recessions) and perhaps even compared with 1999 or 2018 (previous times of low unemployment). Americans have more money per capita than the overwhelming majority of people around the world do. But our system of hyper-capitalism still shouldn’t be described as good or strong, because it leaves so many people either struggling or very nervous about their future.
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A presidential election year, when Americans are focused more than usual on politics, is an ideal time to highlight the inadequacies of the U.S. economic system and call for structural changes. My worry is that even very left-wing people who usually raise these issues will instead spend this year only cheerleading about current economic conditions, to help Biden defeat Trump.
I understand that impulse. The election of Trump would be terrible. But I’m not sure that crowing about the economy is a great electoral strategy. Polls suggest a huge chunk of Democrats and independents (so people who aren’t reflexively opposed to Biden) are skeptical they are living in boom times, despite the president’s supporters constantly telling them that they are. Voters tend to think about the future, so laying out new proposals would probably be more effective for Democrats politically than listing off bills passed two or three years ago.
But my real concern is how this kind of messaging affects policy. People on the left need to stop validating the notions that a strong economy is simply one with low unemployment and high job growth and that a good president on economic issues is one who facilitates those conditions. Unemployment and inflation were very low when Trump was president. I am not looking for the candidate who can best manage a high-inequality, high-insecurity country.
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Biden is a superior candidate to Trump not because of his economic competence but because of his economic values: aligning with unions, criticizing corporations when they try to rip off ordinary Americans, supporting the creation of more clean-energy jobs, trying to expand America’s meager safety net with policies such as a child tax credit.
It’s not as if Biden and Democrats never discuss those values. But the party’s message is too heavily weighted toward celebrating current conditions, with comparably little focus on the structural weaknesses of the U.S. economy and how Democrats would address them in the future. If Biden is reelected, it will be harder to push for higher taxes on the wealthy, more affordable higher education, limits on corporate power, increased labor and union rights, and other much-needed policies if Democrats have spent 2024 saying everything is going spectacularly in the United States economically.
Alas, I suspect Democrats will stick with their approach. Many party officials love to brand Democrats as more mature and sober than Republicans, as opposed to emphasizing the deep policy differences between the two parties. And some Democratic leaders are supportive of the current economic structure of the country and aren’t that interested in changing much anyway.
But Americans should vote for Biden and Democrats so that they can make the economy great — not because it already is.
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I wish the Democratic Party, which represents unions, workers and lower-income Americans much more than the Republicans do, would spend less time this election season crowing about its management of America’s deeply flawed economic system and more time pledging to reform it. Describing current economic conditions in glowing terms might be a good short-term political strategy, but it weakens the case for the deeper changes America needs.
President Biden and other top Democratic Party officials keep reeling off statistics about low unemployment, rising wages, declining inflation, better-paying jobs for Americans without college degrees and a shrinking of the gaps in employment and wages between White and Black Americans. They are doing that for two reasons. First and most important, they are highlighting real, positive developments. Many Americans have more money and better jobs than before. That’s worth celebrating.
Second, they are trying to boost their party electorally. Officials in both parties and many journalists believe that economic conditions play a major role in election results. In reality, the truism “It’s the economy, stupid” is overly simplistic and at times outright wrong. But Biden’s dismal approval ratings would probably be even lower if prices were increasing as much as they were two years ago.
Here’s the problem: Even a strong economy by U.S. standards is pretty weak for millions of people. About 13 percent of Americans (44 million) live in households that struggle to afford food, nearly 12 percent of Americans (38 million) are in poverty, and 8 percent (26 million) don’t have health insurance. Homelessness and evictions are on the rise. The 43 million Americans with college debt owe on average around $40,000.
And while the overwhelming majority of American adults have a steady income and can pay for food, even those who are better-off right now live in a state of perpetual uncertainty, as the political organizer Astra Taylor described in her recent book “The Age of Insecurity.” They rightly fear that they are a layoff or illness away from financial peril.
And work isn’t just about a paycheck. Jobs provide purpose and community. But that can be ripped away instantly in a country where laws make it easy to fire people and the economic structure creates incentives for companies to dismiss hundreds or thousands of workers at a time to raise their stock prices.
“When we examine society through the lens of insecurity, which affects everyone, as opposed to inequality, which emphasizes two opposing extremes, we can see the degree to which unnecessary suffering is widespread even among those who appear to be ‘winning’ according to the logic of the capitalist game,” Taylor writes.
I read the data about strong job growth. But it’s hard for me to feel positive about the U.S. economy while journalists and tech workers get laid off in droves; teachers and professors quit their jobs, frustrated with Republican politicians undermining their work; and tens of thousands of federal workers face dismissals by former president Donald Trump if he wins the election. And even as the economy is insecure for so many people, billionaires not only have more money than any human would ever need but turn that wealth into power, buying social media platforms and increasing the racist content on them, forcing out presidents of universities and funding campaigns against politicians who try to regulate their businesses.
The average American is better off economically compared with 2010 (after the Great Recessions) and perhaps even compared with 1999 or 2018 (previous times of low unemployment). Americans have more money per capita than the overwhelming majority of people around the world do. But our system of hyper-capitalism still shouldn’t be described as good or strong, because it leaves so many people either struggling or very nervous about their future.
A presidential election year, when Americans are focused more than usual on politics, is an ideal time to highlight the inadequacies of the U.S. economic system and call for structural changes. My worry is that even very left-wing people who usually raise these issues will instead spend this year only cheerleading about current economic conditions, to help Biden defeat Trump.
I understand that impulse. The election of Trump would be terrible. But I’m not sure that crowing about the economy is a great electoral strategy. Polls suggest a huge chunk of Democrats and independents (so people who aren’t reflexively opposed to Biden) are skeptical they are living in boom times, despite the president’s supporters constantly telling them that they are. Voters tend to think about the future, so laying out new proposals would probably be more effective for Democrats politically than listing off bills passed two or three years ago.
But my real concern is how this kind of messaging affects policy. People on the left need to stop validating the notions that a strong economy is simply one with low unemployment and high job growth and that a good president on economic issues is one who facilitates those conditions. Unemployment and inflation were very low when Trump was president. I am not looking for the candidate who can best manage a high-inequality, high-insecurity country.
Biden is a superior candidate to Trump not because of his economic competence but because of his economic values: aligning with unions, criticizing corporations when they try to rip off ordinary Americans, supporting the creation of more clean-energy jobs, trying to expand America’s meager safety net with policies such as a child tax credit.
It’s not as if Biden and Democrats never discuss those values. But the party’s message is too heavily weighted toward celebrating current conditions, with comparably little focus on the structural weaknesses of the U.S. economy and how Democrats would address them in the future. If Biden is reelected, it will be harder to push for higher taxes on the wealthy, more affordable higher education, limits on corporate power, increased labor and union rights, and other much-needed policies if Democrats have spent 2024 saying everything is going spectacularly in the United States economically.
Alas, I suspect Democrats will stick with their approach. Many party officials love to brand Democrats as more mature and sober than Republicans, as opposed to emphasizing the deep policy differences between the two parties. And some Democratic leaders are supportive of the current economic structure of the country and aren’t that interested in changing much anyway.
But Americans should vote for Biden and Democrats so that they can make the economy great — not because it already is.
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