Rotadom
Satan's Plaything
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2017
- Posts
- 8,701
No, really.
If the United States’ economy were an athlete, right now it would be peak LeBron James.
If it were a pop star, it would be peak Taylor Swift. Four years ago, the pandemic temporarily
brought much of the world economy to a halt. Since then, America’s economic performance
has left other countries in the dust and even broken some of its own records. The growth rate
is high, the unemployment rate is at historic lows, household wealth is surging, and wages are
rising faster than costs, especially for the working class. There are many ways to define a good
economy. America is in tremendous shape according to just about any of them.
The American public doesn’t feel that way—a dynamic that many people, including me,
have recently tried to explain. But if, instead of asking how people feel about the economy,
we ask how it’s objectively performing, we get a very different answer.
Let’s start with economists’ favorite metric: growth. When an economy is growing, more money
is being spent. More stuff is being produced, more services are being performed, more businesses
are being started, more workers are being hired—and, because of this abundance, living standards
are probably rising. (On the flip side, during a recession—literally, when the economy shrinks—
life gets materially worse.) Right now America’s economic-growth rate is the envy of the world.
From the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, U.S. GDP grew by 8.2 percent—nearly twice as fast as
Canada’s, three times as fast as the European Union’s, and more than eight times as fast as the United Kingdom’s.
If the United States’ economy were an athlete, right now it would be peak LeBron James.
If it were a pop star, it would be peak Taylor Swift. Four years ago, the pandemic temporarily
brought much of the world economy to a halt. Since then, America’s economic performance
has left other countries in the dust and even broken some of its own records. The growth rate
is high, the unemployment rate is at historic lows, household wealth is surging, and wages are
rising faster than costs, especially for the working class. There are many ways to define a good
economy. America is in tremendous shape according to just about any of them.
The American public doesn’t feel that way—a dynamic that many people, including me,
have recently tried to explain. But if, instead of asking how people feel about the economy,
we ask how it’s objectively performing, we get a very different answer.
Let’s start with economists’ favorite metric: growth. When an economy is growing, more money
is being spent. More stuff is being produced, more services are being performed, more businesses
are being started, more workers are being hired—and, because of this abundance, living standards
are probably rising. (On the flip side, during a recession—literally, when the economy shrinks—
life gets materially worse.) Right now America’s economic-growth rate is the envy of the world.
From the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, U.S. GDP grew by 8.2 percent—nearly twice as fast as
Canada’s, three times as fast as the European Union’s, and more than eight times as fast as the United Kingdom’s.
