It’s an old cartoon gag, but maybe you’ve seen some version of it somewhere: a guy needs to cross a stream without soaking himself. He sees a spot where a half-dozen identical round stones are sticking out of the water, each a step from the other. Encouraged, he starts crossing, but it turns out the third stone is actually the back of a turtle. The turtle sees him coming and submerges, causing a surprise dunking.
Hahahaha.
It would be funnier if the guy weren’t representing every American today. I’ll explain after this brief pause to show you some polling:
In January the people at Pew Research interviewed 5,000 Americans about the U.S. economy. Turns out it’s the biggest issue for voters today, with three-quarters of those questioned saying so. In publishing the results, Pew headlined their report “Positive views of the nation’s economy increase, driven by Democrats.” That’s the best headline they could put on it from a liberal point of view.
The poll shows that 44% of Democrats say economic conditions now are “excellent or good.” As you might guess, Republicans are less cheerful—only 13% rate the economy good or excellent. You might think well, this is all political, but if it is, it’s still not good news for Democrats. Here’s why:
That 44% positive review by Democrats is the best rating they’ve given Joe Biden since he took office. And it’s still not a majority of the people who voted for Biden.
The survey’s results only look this positive because Pew included people who think the economy is excellent or good. That means more than half of Democrats think the economy is somewhere between “bleh” and “crapola.”
Don’t worry about what Republicans think. Just 28% of people who are political independents give the economy an “excellent to good” rating. That’s barely one in four.
26% of all those questioned think the economy will be better next year, but 33% still think it will be worse. The only good news is that the negative number was 46% a year ago.
On the economy, Pew says “Despite the improvement in economic attitudes, the public is far less upbeat today than it was from 2018 through early 2020, during Donald Trump’s presidency and prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.”
To an alien from the planet Arcturus VII, the economy looks good— unemployment is a mere 3.7%, the stock market is soaring. Americans, however, are worried about that damned turtle.
This country has been whipsawed as never before during the past four years. The Covid pandemic was a disaster in several ways, damaging the economy, killing a million Americans and making the rest of them think government can’t be trusted in an emergency. You’ll notice all our “experts” have given up looking for the pangolin or bat that caused it; people are realizing the “conspiracy theory” about the Chinese developing it in a lab (with American money) is not a theory at all.
Inflation has raised prices more than 20% in three years, and that’s what the government will admit—it certainly feels more like 30% or so. And why am I supposed to tip people who simply stand there when I pick up food?
If unemployment is so low, why are the roads crowded at two or three p.m. every weekday? Is anybody actually working?
Credit card debt for all Americans was $ 770 billion when Joe Biden took office. Now it’s $1.13 trillion, 47% higher. Basically every American household got a new credit card in the past three years—and maxed it out.
That increased credit card debt is costing Americans an extra $80 billion a year in interest alone. But don’t worry, the federal government is in worse shape. Thanks to huge deficits and rising interest rates, the government now must pay more than $800 billion a year in interest on its debt. That’s more than the defense budget. Another way of looking at it: if the idiots in Congress hadn’t spent decades of good economies overspending instead of sticking with a budget, we could all have free health care.
But everything is fine, just fine. Unemployment is low, the economy looks great, even inflation is tapering off, sort of. But if even most Democrats don’t see things getting better soon, what’s really happening?
So go on your way—just watch out for those damned turtles.