Apologists for white working class Trump voters have continued to cling to the false meme that "economic anxiety" drove them to vote for rump rather than admit that it was Trump's calls for open racism against non-whites and Hispanics that proved to be the true motivation. Yet, if one believes the myth put out by apologists, then economic anxiety should now be driving these voters away from Trump. Why, because real earnings have fallen during the first 18 months of Trump/Pence's tenure whereas they rose during the last 18 months of the Obama administration. Thus, what we have witnessed is what the Republican Party has used as its mode of operation for years: getting white voters to vote against their own best economic interests by playing to bigotry and racism. A column in the Washington Post looks at the fall of earnings adjusted for inflation and how the Trump/Pence regime has been deceptively reporting wage earnings. Here are highlights:
Despite robust economic numbers during the Trump presidency, the American public has seemed curiously unmoved by such good news as the lowest U.S. unemployment level in nearly half a century. Its enthusiasm might have been dampened by this underappreciated economic reality: The typical working American's earnings, when properly measured, have declined during the Trump administration.
As any White House would, the president's economic team touts positive earnings data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that suggest rising wages and salaries. But the figures are misleading. They focus not on how much an average working person earns but on the "average earnings" of all employed people. In times of rising inequality, employees at the top pull up "average" earnings. . . . Another catch: The data used by the White House doesn't account for inflation. Adjust the median earnings data for inflation, and the illusion of progress evaporates.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a different database for that view, and its quarter-by-quarter numbers show a very different picture. Median weekly earnings of all workers rose from $865 in the first quarter of 2017 to $876 in the quarter ending June 30, 2018. The typical working American's earnings increased $11 weekly over 18 months, barely more than one-quarter of the economic progress touted by the White House.
Even that modest gain is not very meaningful. The significance of what people earn lies in what they can do with their earnings, and inflation eats away at what any of us can purchase or save. As a result, serious earnings analysis is always framed in inflation-adjusted, or "real," terms. From January 2017 to June 2018, inflation totaled 3.77 percent, while the $11 increase in unadjusted weekly earnings over those 18 months represented gains of 1.27 percent.
The result: $876 in June 2018 had the same value as $848.20 in January 2017. In real terms, the weekly earnings of a typical working American fell $16.80, or 1.9 percent, during Donald Trump's first 18 months as president. . . . Using the same measure, real median weekly earnings increased substantially during Barack Obama's final 18 months as president.
In real terms, the weekly earnings of a typical employed American increased $35.82, or 4.5 percent, over Obama's last 18 months in office, growing from $803 in the third quarter of 2015 to $838.82 in the fourth quarter of 2016.
In Ronald Reagan's succinct terms, average working Americans are worse off under the Trump presidency than they were under Obama's. Yes, low unemployment is something to applaud, but there might be a good reason that so many who have jobs aren't clapping.
1 comment:
I totally agree. It was the underlying racism they saw in Cheetolini what drove them to the voting booth. The fear that the 'other' (anybody who did not look like them) was going to 'take over' is what has made them blind to the con that this administration has played on them. And they will never admit they've been conned. After all, they make an effort to believe everything Twitler tells them.
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