For whom is “the economy doing well”?

BidenomicsThe article Should People be Happy About the Biden Economy? by Dean Baker (CounterPunch) answers its own question with “yes.” I’m not so convinced, as I explain in my responses below. Baker’s analysis and my critique of it is several weeks old at this point, but it’s still applicable.

More recently, Paul Krugman has jumped on the bandwagon, accusing anyone who thinks that the economy sucks—only because it seems to suck for themselves personally—off supporting Putin. Baker doesn’t go that far, but he does swerve a lot closer than I thought he would.

Baker, like Krugman, can’t seem to help seeing the world as valiant Democrats trying to save the economy for everyone despite the Republican’s interference. That isn’t really the feeling I get when watching the Democrats at work, but let’s let Baker explain in his own words.

“Here also there were conservative members acting as a brake on virtually everything Biden put on the table. And, he lost even this slim majority in the 2022 election, although an additional Senate seat gave him a small amount of extra wiggle room.”

This is all true, but it suggests that Joe Biden is not conservative. There is nothing in the shape of the policies that he’s enacted that belies his prior fifty years in office. He’s proud of his police-state record. He’s a corporate whore, a grifter, and a malicious asshole. He always has been. Why do so many people suggest the opposite? Baker here seems to be pushing the line of thinking that just because the Republicans are batshit, the Democrats must be some sort of safe harbor to which sane people can flee.[1]

This is absolutely how the Democrats get you. They are absolutely just as disinterested in the fates of anyone making less than $400K per year as the Republicans; they are just willing to lie about it more—or differently. With Democrats as with Republicans, you have to watch what their hands do, not listen to what their mouths say.

“The unemployment rate, which stood at 6.3 percent when Biden took office, had fallen to 3.9 percent by the end of 2021, and has not gone over 4.0 percent since. This is the longest period where the unemployment rate has been below 4.0 percent in more than half a century.”

It’s so frustrating to have to constantly think that no-one seems to care what kind of jobs these are or how utterly gamed the statistics are. Dean Baker himself writes article after article about how there are six statistics provided by Bureau of Labor Statistics every month—and how everyone cites the absolutely most optimistic one available. And then he turns around and cites those same statistics as if there were nothing wrong with them, as if they are prime evidence of a booming economy for all, as if an economy that benefits elite Democrats and ticks all the right boxes were good for everyone.

“As a result of the ARP [American Rescue Plan Act of 2021], the United States is the only major economy that is largely back to its pre-pandemic growth path. The U.S. also now has the lowest inflation rate of any of the G-7 economies.”

Congratulations, the U.S. excels the most at blowing smoke up its own ass. The rise benefits the rich the most. It’s really odd to hear Baker paraphrasing Reagan’s “rising tide lifts all boats”, trickle-down bullshit.

“In spite of the inflation of 2021 and 2022, real wages for the average worker are higher than they were before the pandemic. And, there have been larger gains for those at the bottom, reversing roughly a quarter of the rise in wage inequality we saw over the last four decades.”

So, it’s better than it was but still terrible? There’s still ¾ of the wage inequality to make up for, but … what? When do you celebrate? The gain could be reversed on a whim. There is no trust that it won’t be. Many of the programs that led to the gains he’s talking about have already expired.

I think Baker is trying to talk things up until November 2024 because he’s terrified that Trump will become president again in 2024. He’s trying to sell the dead horse that is Biden by telling people to ignore the evidence of their eyes and to listen to his statistics. Statistics don’t put food on the table or pay the rent, but you just gotta hang on until next November—then you can admit that things are going back into the shitter.

Poor Dean now has to watch Joe Biden double down on supporting Israel while it commits war crime after war crime, which is tanking his chances of reelection, despite the awesome economy he’s created.

“Tens of millions of people are now working from home, either entirely or partially, saving themselves hundreds of hours a year in commuting time, and thousands of dollars on work-related expenses. These savings in time and money do not show up in our data on real wages.”

True, but those people are also only twenty percent of the workforce (obviously the most important part of the workforce, ammirite?). Good for them, but I don’t see how the other eighty percent should celebrate gains that they have no way of enjoying. They can take solace in having a second job where they bring their newly home-officed lords and masters takeout and Amazon orders. It’s a glorious class system made immanent, so what’s the problem, right, Dean?

“These are all extraordinarily positive developments for large segments of the population. There is no period since the late 1990s that could even come close to the progress made in the first two and a half years of the Biden administration.”

I’m afraid I really have a hard time believing this statement, even from Dean Baker. What does he mean by “large”? Like, as a percentage? Is this happening despite the Democrats? How long-term viable are these gains? Are they equitable? Why would they be? Did something change in the power balance or basic morality of the U.S. political landscape that I missed? Is Biden such an incredible force that he singlehandedly dragged the U.S. upstream? Is that the argument?

“But on the whole, it is pretty hard not to see the overall picture as being overwhelmingly positive, especially considering that Biden had to deal with the disruptions created by multiple waves of Covid, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

Are you f%#king kidding me? “Overwhelmingly positive!” Lay it on a bit thicker there, Dean. Baker is often absolutely blind politically, but this is a bit much, even for him. Is he aiming for a job at the New York Times? Does he need a gig on CNN? Is he just jumping on the “lesser evil” bandwagon 15 months early? Like, if Trump is super-bad, then Biden must be super-good? I don’t even know how to process this. He’s portraying poor Biden as having had to deal with a war when, in fact, he could have easily prevented it by not provoking it in the first place?[2] Smoke the NYT’s ganja little more, Dean.

At least the stock market’s up again, so that must be good. Wall Street loves wars. So does Bitcoin, apparently.

“[…] notably by modernizing the country’s power grid and setting up a system of charging stations for electric cars.”

What a f*&king waste of money. Biden could have spent it on trains, but I suppose most American have given up on having anything other than a slightly less-polluting copy of the same terrible system that they already have. Biden is pouring money into this because all of his donors have ensured that he and his supporters will be handsomely rewarded for it. There is no change in the basic system.

But, apparently, the country’s infrastructure has been modernized. Funny, it didn’t feel like it when I was there this summer, but I admit that I was just hanging out in the poorer parts of the nation, where these amazing effects have failed to be felt—and where they will mostly likely never be felt because no one gives a shit about those places. They’ve got nothing to offer, so they get nothing from the Democrats. Hey, though, maybe Dean Baker knows better. New York City is flourishing, right?

“The second piece of legislation Biden got through Congress was the CHIPS Act , which appropriated $280 billion over the next five years (approximately 1.0 percent of the federal budget) for research and support for manufacturing of advanced semi-conductors in the United States.”

Yeah, good on Biden for subsidizing high-tech companies in the States. They had hardly and money or profits of their own to invest. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, it could turn out that TSMC isn’t going to build a packaging facility—and that the fab is behind schedule and can’t find the employees it needs. Money well spent, on the right people. Always the right people.

“It probably makes sense in any world to ensure that key components for the economy will be accessible in the event of a conflict with China, and given that Taiwan is our major supplier, this is a real concern.”

Again, the fact that it’s a real concern is because that conflict is being massively stoked and provoked by Biden, but go Biden, right Dean? How can this man be so politically tone-deaf? He’s lauding Biden for making a few hand-waving motions in the direction of fixing problems that he himself is causing—because Biden’s sponsors want more war and want to extend the American empire beyond its expiration date. Biden’s spending our money to solve a problem he’s causing. Bow before him in thanks.

“[…] positive story from an economic standpoint, although we should be asking more about ownership of this research than seems to be the case now.”

We’re asking for literally nothing! The government funds everything! And owns nothing! It’s all in private hands. Stop being so naive. You know this, Dean. Do you need to believe that Biden is a good president and, thus, a viable candidate for a two-term president, so you just make shit up about how awesome he is? This, when you normally spend every article picking apart the massive giveaways? I can’t tell whether you got an LLM to write this article for you.

“[…] we at last seem to be making good progress towards a green transition.”

No. We absolutely are not doing that. We are making good progress on spending other people’s money on our friends’ companies that are pretending to care about a green transition. But they don’t. They don’t care about that at all. They care about making money for themselves. No-one in that country gives a flying blue fuck about a green transition, not if it interferes in any way with easy ways of making money. The environment is nowhere on the list of priorities.

“We will be able to raise billions of dollars of tax revenue each year, just by monitoring what companies announce they are spending on buybacks. And, we don’t have to worry they will cheat. What will they do, lie to their shareholders?”

That seems spectacularly naive for companies that are international conglomerates. I can’t imagine they would have let this law pass if they didn’t have a workaround. But, sure, let’s believe that the Biden administration—led by the former Senator from ViSA, remember—has cracked the code and finally found a tax that will pass Wall Street and Congress and is super-easy to monitor and generates oodles of money. Pardon me for not believing it until I see it. We hear all the time about the U.S. turning a corner on some progressive measure until we realize that we’ve somehow been fooled again.

“[…] the corporate income tax, which currently averages around 13 percent of all profits,”

Does it really? That’s pitifully low but, at the same time, it also seems high, when the big guns are paying much, much less than that. Dean’s written about Walmart and Amazon—the nation’s two largest employers—paying essentially no taxes.

“With a growing body of evidence showing that a lack of competition has been important in raising profits at the expense of wages,”

Did we not already know this without collecting more evidence? Did we really need to use scientific experiments to learn that companies that claim that they couldn’t possibly pay higher salaries because they’re too busy paying billions in dividends and stock buybacks to all of their shareholders are full of shit?

“Biden’s appointees are committed to respecting workers’ rights to have a union, if they want one.”

If by “respecting”, you mean not being allowed to help workers at the expense of employers. How do you ignore how the Biden administration crushed the railroad strike last year, Dean?

The Biden administration does not give a shit about workers. Not. One. Bit.

They care about ensuring profits for their crony international conglomerates, first and foremost. All you have to do is watch what happens when anyone threatens a strike: the Biden administration steps in to “help” by neutering all demands and using whatever legal means they can to force people to keep working without making any gains for themselves.

Companies that shed billions in profits per year claim that they couldn’t possibly pay their employees cost-of-living increases—and the Biden administration nods enthusiastically and steps in to crack some skulls and bust some kneecaps until there’s a bloody signature on yet another capitulatory deal where the workers walk away with far too little and their management-heavy union and the company’s board of directors walk away grinning like Cheshire Cats.

“[…] when we have clear evidence of the much greater efficiency of this sort of tax, we will be able to move quickly down that road. The Republicans, and many Democrats, will do everything they can to prevent corporations from paying more tax, but when we have them defending pure waste, we are fighting them on favorable turf.”

Again, this is so unbelievably naive. It hasn’t worked anything like the way he describes in well over forty years. People don’t want companies to pay taxes enough that they’ll elect people to enforce it. The opposite happens.

He’s arguing that we have “favorable turf” because … why? Because the Democrats and Republicans are afraid of looking like corporate stooges? When has that every stopped them? There are no alternatives. It doesn’t matter who gets elected—companies don’t pay even close to enough taxes. Occasionally, someone will pass something that makes it look a bit better, to keep the savages at bay. But then a giant thing like the Trump (or the Clinton, or the Bush, or the Obama) tax cut eats up all of the gained ground anyway.

Baker’s argument amounts to celebrating a field goal by the losing team when the score was already 721 – 0. What the hell are we celebrating? Are we turning this thing around? Give me a break.

“I would say the same about Biden, but he is doing it in a context where he enjoys a far more tentative majority than Roosevelt faced. And, he clearly is not the same sort of charismatic figure as Roosevelt. But all in all, he is doing a damn good job.”

Biden: better than Roosevelt. Hard to accept, Dean. Roosevelt apparently had it easy compared to poor Biden. Jesus. That country really has lost the ability to wish for anything but a slightly less bloody beating. Honestly, just bend over and grab your ankles—and be effusively thankful when you get a drop of vaseline.