Tipsheet

Economic Data: The Left's Economic Talking Points and Predictions Have Been Catastrophically Wrong

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  December 31, 2019 12:01 PM

We are just hours away from the arrival of 2020 -- and 2019 is coming to a close with an economic bang, with holiday spending soaring amid strong consumer confidence.  How did we get here?  Let's recall what 'progressives' predicted, including embarrassing gems like this.  The primary stale leftist talking point is so familiar that it's almost boring: Conservative economic policies only help those at the very top, and ignore or harm everyone else.  Variants of this claim were repeated ad nauseam in 2017, as Congressional Republicans and President Trump enacted historic tax reform and deregulation policies.

At the time, Democrats and many of their media brethren loudly insisted that the tax law would be a catastrophe, with Nancy Pelosi calling it "Armageddon," the "end of the world" and "Frankenstein."  People will die, they screamed, as per usual.  In reality, the economy has been roaring ever since, with every single income group reaping the benefits (if you want to raise the issue of deficits, read this).  In fact, it's working Americans who are disproportionately winning.  The actual results are the opposite of the negative rhetoric:

Wages for rank-and-file workers are rising at the quickest pace in more than a decade, even faster than for bosses, a sign that the labor market has tightened sufficiently to convey bigger increases to lower-paid employees. Gains for those workers have accelerated much of this year, a time when the unemployment rate fell to a half-century low. A short supply of workers, increased poaching and minimum-wage increases have helped those nearer to the bottom of the pay scale. Pay for the bottom 25% of wage earners rose 4.5% in November from a year earlier, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Wages for the top 25% of earners rose 2.9%. Similarly, the Atlanta Fed found wages for low-skilled workers have accelerated since early 2018, and last month matched the pace of high-skill workers for the first time since 2010.

CBS News' headline on the data reads, "Low-wage workers are getting bigger raises than bosses." Here's Axios with more context:

Wages for nonsupervisory employees — who make up 82% of the workforce — are rising at the fastest rate in more than a decade...it indicates that the benefits of a tightening labor market and a time of historically low unemployment rates are finally being passed along to most workers....Workers at the bottom of the pay scale have been feeling positive effects on their wages at the end of 2019 — especially when compared to those at the top.

Sorry, "top one percent" obsessives; the bottom quartile of earners have seen their wages rise faster than the top cohort.  And sorry "Armageddon" criers; your narrative has been utterly and thoroughly busted, and the overall data is unspinnably good: 


The forecasts moving forward are looking pretty rosy, too:


It's not just Goldman Sachs, Wall Street or the top one percent who are feeling upbeat.  Fully eight in ten Americans are bullish on 2020:

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He's got his work cut out for him, and his own self-destructive conduct has rendered him far more vulnerable than any incumbent ought to be under these strong economic conditions.  But read through this post for a reminder of why President Trump will be formidable in his re-election quest.  When the ball drops tonight, the election year will finally be here.