Straggling in a Good Economy, and Now Struggling in a Crisis

[Zorro]

The coronavirus pandemic has shown how close to the edge many Americans were living, with pay and benefits eroding even as corporate profits surged.

An indelible image from the Great Depression features a well-dressed family seated with their dog in a comfy car, smiling down from an oversize billboard on weary souls standing in line at a relief agency. “World’s highest standard of living,” the billboard boasts, followed by a tagline: “There’s no way like the American Way.”

The economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has suddenly hurled the country back to that dislocating moment captured in 1937 by the photographer Margaret Bourke-White. In the updated 2020 version, lines of cars stretch for miles to pick up groceries from a food pantry; jobless workers spend days trying to file for unemployment benefits; renters and homeowners plead with landlords and mortgage bankers for extensions; and outside hospitals, ill patients line up overnight to wait for virus testing.

In an economy that has been hailed for its record-shattering successes, the most basic necessities — food, shelter and medical care — are all suddenly at risk.

The latest crisis has played out in sobering economic data and bleak headlines — most recently on Thursday, when the Labor Department said 5.2 million workers filed last week for unemployment benefits.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/business/economy/coronavirus-economy.html

[NewJeffCT]

1. Sadly, the economy wasn't that great through the end of 2019

yes, unemployment was low but that just continued the downward trend already in place the last several years of Obama.

The wage rises outside of the top 5% or so is almost entirely due to Democratic state & local initiatives to raise the minimum wage.

The budget & trade deficits were already way up under Trump, and they generated mediocre growth.

Manufacturing was in recession the entire second half of 2019.

Job creation was mediocre.

The stock market was at record heights. Woop di do! You know what, it set all time record highs under Obama, Clinton and Reagan before that.

Trump just self-promotes that the economy is fantastic and his huge supporting echo chamber repeats it ad nauseum. Remember, that echo chamber includes:

TV:
Fox News
OAN
Sinclair Broadcasting

Radio:
Rush Limbaugh
Scores of Rush wannabes across the nation
Cumulus Media

Newspapers
NY Post, Washington Times and hundreds of local and regional newspapers nationwide

Internet
Breitbart, Info Wars, and thousands of other far right websites amplified by an army of Russian bots and trolls