Wouldn't even you have to admit that a 6.9 GDP is just a complete fluke brought about by economic conditions triggered by a pandemic? A combination of a tremendous inventory rebuild against a population flush with cash to spend, a lot of that cash by government stimulus checks. Regarding GDP slowing this year, it's well on its way already. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tracking tool as of February 9th has GDP growth at 0.7 percent seasonally adjusted.
I think most families look at economics different than you do. They're lookining at what is happening today, not 6 months from now or a year from now. They look at what's in their paycheck and wages have gone up 5 point something. Great. Then they look at how far that paycheck is going and they're falling behind because the inflation rate is greater than the wage growth. Their economics is very simple - income and outflow (how much does stuff cost). That's how many people judge ANY president.
And I don't think Biden's smart ass responses to inflation questions by Lester Holt of NBC and criticism of such responses by analyists at CNN of all places is helping Biden one bit.
The estimates are low for Q1, about 1% due to omicron effects in January, but rebounding considerably in Q2, and over 3% for all of 2022.
I've never once given Biden credit for the economic growth, the factors you mentioned are definitely driving a good portion of it. It's one thing to disagree about why the economy is doing well, it's another to just ignore actual data and say the economy is terrible.
I've said many times that Biden's economy, along with Trumps and Obama's, were all driven by large deficits and artificially low interest rates.
And I agree that most families do look at the economy differently than I do. Because of my job I definitely focus on macro data and look at the country as a whole, which has been producing at a very high rate, with huge increases in productivity, with wages growing significantly, with over 40% earnings growth last year.
I know people keep pointing to recent inflation outpacing wage growth, but I've argued that isn't the case when you include the previous year when wages grew and inflation was low due to covid, so on a two year basis they are better off. And we'll likely see wages continue to grow this year, as inflation falls later in the year. Not to mention how inflation is helping the largest asset in most families in this country, as the 2/3 of the country that are homeowners have seen their net wealth increase significantly from the rise in home prices.
This board just makes me laugh when they completely discredit any good economic data just because of who is in the white house, despite zero people on this board actually ever arguing that Biden deserves credit for it. The closest is me and a couple others saying Biden has nothing to with it, but also nothing to do with inflation and oil increases.
It's just ridiculous to say he deserves all the blame for inflation, but none of the credit for the economy. He deserves neither in my opinion, I believe we'd be seeing similar economic growth, along with similar inflation, if Trump were President right now, except we wouldn't be seeing idiots shutting down highways making the supply chain problems even worse.
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