From the White House: REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BIDEN
BEFORE MARINE ONE DEPARTURE
South Lawn
(December 23, 2023)
"Q About the economy, sir, what's your outlook on the economy next year?
THE PRESIDENT: All good.
Take a look. Start reporting it the right way."
It is indeed something of a mystery why so many people see an economy with roughly 5 percent growth, 3 percent or 4 percent unemployment, 25 percent stock market gains, negligible inflation, and tell pollsters they are gloomy to the point where they disapprove of Biden's performance and want to replace him with President Trump. The "start reporting it the right way" reflects the president's frustration.
It's often hard to disentangle what is media bias and what is the underlying reality but on this one my own sense is that there are a lot of ordinary Americans for whom income growth hasn't caught up with price increases. Gas prices, food prices, mortgage rates are up from the Trump era, and wages haven't quite kept pace.
The Treasury Department disputes this, claiming in a blog post, "earnings have outpaced increases in prices such that real wages have increased since before the pandemic. Real weekly earnings for the median worker grew 1.7 percent between 2019 and 2023."
But even Treasury concedes: "Since gas and food are purchased frequently and are necessities, they are particularly salient to consumers." A lot of the Democrat elites don't care much about gas prices because they drive electric cars or bicycle or take the subway.
Anyway, it'll be amusing if Biden goes into the 2024 campaign against Trump attacking the "fake news" or the "enemy of the people" media that "don't write good." There are a few areas of bipartisan consensus in America, perhaps more areas than commonly realized. "Start reporting it the right way" may be one.