"President Joe Biden will leave the White House with a strong economy, historic gains in the job market, a foundation for future manufacturing growth, and having brought down decades-high inflation without triggering a recession.

Those feats, economists say, are even more impressive considering the nation was deep in the throes of a deadly, economy-scarring pandemic when Biden took office."


CAGR of 14.1% (best since Clinton), most jobs created in 50 years, got us out of a Pandemic without a recession and really only high nflation for
18 months.

"During Biden’s time in office, the jobless rate was under 4% for 27 months, a streak not seen since Lyndon B. Johnson was in office, back in the mid-1960s. When you get low unemployment, the people who benefit are disproportionately those at the bottom end of the labor market,” including marginalized groups such as Black workers, Hispanic workers, and people with disabilities, Dean Baker, economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told CNN.

"Wage and employment gaps between Black and White workers narrowed to record levels during Biden’s presidency, Baker noted. Also, the Black unemployment rate hit an all-time low of 4.8% in April 2023, BLS data shows."

"Propelled by legislation such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, federal nondefense investment in physical, human, and research and development capital has soared to over 2 percent of GDP, the highest four-year average since the 1980s."

"This caused an explosion in private investment. According to our Investment Heroes report, in 2021-2023, the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, the top 25 U.S. companies, ranked by domestic capital spending, invested more than $900 billion in the U.S. economy. That’s almost 40 percent more than the comparable total in the first three years of the Trump-Pence administration."

"Factory construction just went through the roof … we’re building at twice the rate that we were before the pandemic, which is incredible,” Baker said. “Some of those factories are now open, but others will be opening over the course of this year and next, and those will be jobs that I’m sure Donald Trump will be very happy to take credit for; but if you don’t have the factories, you don’t have the jobs. And it was the Biden administration that got the factories built.”

By August 2024, real wages for production & non-supervisory had rebounded to exceed that of election day 2020. That doesn't sound great and probably explains why Dems lost the election, but actually pretty good given the economic havoc wrought by Covid. "Private sector weekly wages in the first quarter of 2024 hit $1,527 per week, according to figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Aug. 21. Adjusted for inflation, that’s the highest first-quarter weekly wage in at least two decades, and the biggest year-over-year rise in inflation-adjusted wages since 2021." Highest first quarter weekly wage in at least two decades...

And the foundation was set for a solid economy with the legislation that Biden passed...

It wasn't perfect by any means--housing prices are still crazy, there was an increase in national debt, too much wealth going towards the top...

But all in all things could have way, way worse and likely would have been under any other president. Biden learned a thing or two from being VP under Obama when the federal gvt was too cheap in investing to try to restart the economy. Any Republican would have been too cheap on doing that and it took all of Biden's relationships and political savvy to get so much passed with a bare majority...

And yet people felt the need to change from Biden...to whatever this is going on now.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/19/economy/ ... index.html

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/488 ... americans/

Biden's economy was fueled by massive deficit spending when it wasn't necessary for economic stimulus. That stimulus led to inflation and higher interest rates that 1) directly led to the D loss in 2024 and 2) a lot of hardship for people in the housing market facing these higher interest rates.

So I'm an urban planner, and we often see government getting involved in land use issues to get outcomes they want to see. Ds put massive amounts of money into renewable energy. It was a policy decision, but there is just so much money in there, way too much money, and that money is working cross purposes, pushing out other things we want, like a rational housing policy. Case in point, the stupidest land use idea since the urban renewal days:

https://detroitmi.gov/government/mayors ... ghborhoods

The City of Detroit, will be emptying out neighborhoods where people still live, so they can put up solar panels in an area that is currently for housing, has access to water, sewer, electricity, fantastic transportation in the center of the urban core. So freaking stupid at a time when housing prices are high and going up, even in places like Detroit. Yes, these are crappy neighborhoods, but focus on improving it and planning for redevelopment into something MUCH more useful than solar panels. And I'm sure that they would be doing that, if it wasn't for the free money to implement a STUPID idea like this from the Biden admin's policy. And there are hundreds of stupid ideas out there that we're subsidizing.

Do you like your money doing stupid things? I don't. Honestly, the way the Dem's governed fiscally during a time of economic prosperity was something to learn from, not to praise. Dems are going to keep losing if they put shit like this out there.

There's a song about this, right? Fascists to the right of me, morons to the left, stuck in the middle with you. Or something like that.

Thank you Geo. I would also add that the economy had substantial tailwinds when Biden took over and many of the improvements that Freeman mentions were happening anyway. The improvements could have happened without the inflation if Biden hadn't rammed through the government spending.

But that is a lot better than having someone working to destroy our democracy.

Ray Jay wrote:But that is a lot better than having someone working to destroy our democracy.

Horrible choices, but I'm with you RJ.

Ray Jay wrote:Thank you Geo. I would also add that the economy had substantial tailwinds when Biden took over and many of the improvements that Freeman mentions were happening anyway. The improvements could have happened without the inflation if Biden hadn't rammed through the government spending.

This is strange to me. The drivers of inflation were global, not local to the US. We had the mass spending with reduced revenue of COVID, worldwide (and which started before Jan 2021). We also had supply chains broken and squeezed. And then we had an uneven bounce back and sharp rises in demand combined with continued shortages and logistical issues.

And then Putin invaded Ukraine, leading to increased food and energy prices.

US inflation peaked earlier, and a bit lower, than in several majority European nations (including here in the UK where we had the added bonus of Liz Truss messing our fiscal policy up).

That's fair Dan, but certainly *enormous* deficit spending made issues worse than they would have been. The war wasn't the factor in the States that it was in Europe and better comparables are Asian economies that were more insulated (Japan/Korea/China) that didn't see the kind of inflation that USA and Europe did.

danivon wrote:

Ray Jay wrote:Thank you Geo. I would also add that the economy had substantial tailwinds when Biden took over and many of the improvements that Freeman mentions were happening anyway. The improvements could have happened without the inflation if Biden hadn't rammed through the government spending.

This is strange to me. The drivers of inflation were global, not local to the US. We had the mass spending with reduced revenue of COVID, worldwide (and which started before Jan 2021). We also had supply chains broken and squeezed. And then we had an uneven bounce back and sharp rises in demand combined with continued shortages and logistical issues.

And then Putin invaded Ukraine, leading to increased food and energy prices.

US inflation peaked earlier, and a bit lower, than in several majority European nations (including here in the UK where we had the added bonus of Liz Truss messing our fiscal policy up).

There were certainly other factors, but Biden's first legislation, the American Rescue Plan was passed after the covid vaccines were widespread and the economy was already on the upswing. The supply chains and logistical issues were partially Biden's fault because this $1.9 Trillion stimulus plan created massive demand. Trump's CARES Act and subsequent legislation had already added $3T of stimulus. Excess demand is a big part of the supply issues that you mention.

geojanes wrote:That's fair Dan, but certainly *enormous* deficit spending made issues worse than they would have been. The war wasn't the factor in the States that it was in Europe and better comparables are Asian economies that were more insulated (Japan/Korea/China) that didn't see the kind of inflation that USA and Europe did.

As gas and oil prices are global, it will have had an effect. And the US does import food, which again will have been affected by global shortages / logistical issues.

I think it's too simplistic and reductive to say that budget deficits cause inflation in such a tied way.

Over time they will, providing the spending is in the US and there isn't something else soaking up money-supply. But in the short term it totally depends on the details.

The US has had budget deficits for ages, but before Covid inflation was pretty low. Even with the big deficits from the 2008 crash

Ray Jay wrote:
There were certainly other factors, but Biden's first legislation, the American Rescue Plan was passed after the covid vaccines were widespread and the economy was already on the upswing. The supply chains and logistical issues were partially Biden's fault because this $1.9 Trillion stimulus plan created massive demand. Trump's CARES Act and subsequent legislation had already added $3T of stimulus. Excess demand is a big part of the supply issues that you mention.

Was the demand "excess"?

The issue during Covid was that demand was suppressed, which was balanced out by supply issues at the same time. When demand returned (and there was a rebound) the supply couldn't catch up. And that happened globally, not just in the USA.

The problem with not having a stimulus would have been economic stagnation as businesses closed and laid people off, which would have had a worse impact on the economy (and would also have driven up deficits)

This article argues that excessive demand was not the major cause of inflation...

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/covi ... ply-shock/

To me, I would rather have the fed gvt give a shove rather than a push when we're coming out of a depressed economy. Enduring an inflation problem for really only 18 months or so and not going into a recession to gain control is a pretty good accomplishment. And the investments that Biden made would have set up our future economy except Trump is intent on trashing it...

I also remember when Obama underfunded his recovery plan in response to the Financial Crisis listening to advisers and Repubs of course--and we had an anemic recovery for quite a while. Keynes was right about government needing to help to provide demand to restart an economy...

Reasonable minds can disagree on this, though. And of course counterfactuals are impossible to know with certainty...

At least we seem to be in agreement on the insanity of this Trump Administration...

freeman3 wrote:At least we seem to be in agreement on the insanity of this Trump Administration...

These people are crazy. Don't know if what's happening in the Southern District of NY is national news yet, but it's a new Saturday Night Massacre.

Big news on Twitter...

This federal reserve report notes that the US economy recovered better than Europe out of Covid and examines some factors why.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/ ... 40517.html

I read elsewhere that US GDP by 2024 exceeded CBO pre-pandemic forecasts. That's pretty good given having gone through a pandemic!

A quote from Google AI:

"Yes, according to recent data, the current GDP is higher than most pre-pandemic forecasts, with the U.S. economy surpassing its pre-pandemic trend and exceeding what was expected before the pandemic began; this is particularly notable compared to other advanced economies where the recovery has been slower."