What One Economist Wants to Hear on Thursday’s SOTU Address
Up-Dated: Dean Baker, CEPR co-founder and Senior Economist, shares what he wants to hear from the President during Thursday’s #SOTU2024.
Dean Baker and CEPR hopes Joe Biden reminds the country of his strong economic record while offering substantive policy pathways to bring more relief to the hard issues many face every day. He surmises what President Joe Biden’s may offer citizens a quick runup of what was accomplished and avoided and what still needs to be accomplished in 2024. “Some” aspects . . .
- economic record
- 24 months of below 4% Unemployment in spite of a pandemic.
- Real Wages are growing faster than inflation.
- Work place satisfaction is high,
- Impact of which is at the lower income
- Reduction in inequality
- Increased Green Energy efforts
- Expanded ACA healthcare benefits at no or less cost
- Expanded VA benefits
- etc.
Pretty good for an old president and he did not have to take over the country or overthrow its government. 2025 and we will have to fix trumps tax breaks, passed under reconciliation, and which greatly benefited those in the upper 1% of income. If the breaks were revised for the upper 20% in income, it would pay for the tax breaks for the other 80% as I have written before.
State of the Union 2024: Biden’s Economic Record, youtube.com
He’s right, of course. And data geeks instantly grasp the significance. The key will be messaging this for low-information voters with short attention spans.
The fact is that evidence-based arguments these days do poorly against grievance-mongering liars. Reciting these statistics will get shouted down by the right-wing noise machine. The mainstream media cover drama, not policy. Packaging is everything.