Rob Shapiro on the Biden Boom

Our long-time collaborator Rob Shapiro published an essay in the Washington Monthly on Friday which has deservedly received lots of attention.  Called “It’s A Biden Boom-And No One Has Noticed Yet,” the essay reviews a great deal of recent economic data and concludes “President Biden and the Democratic Congress are set to preside over the strongest two-year performance on growth, jobs, and income in decades.”

Rob’s compelling essay is a must read, and tracks NDN’s two recent analyses: 3 Times As Many Biden Jobs As Bushes, Trump Combined and 40m of 42m new jobs since 1989 have come under Dem Presidents.  Former NDNer Kristian Ramos has a smart, new piece up in Salon, Humility is the Democrats’ Kryptonite, which covers some of this same, valuable terrain. The repeated success of the American economy under Democratic Presidents – and repeated failure under Rs – remains perhaps the most important, least understood story in American politics today. 

On inflation, NDN’s new edition of its “Saliency Index” finds the Democratic electorate still far more concerned about COVID, climate/extreme weather, the economy and other issues than inflation.  This remains a surprising finding of this new NDN product, but on Friday we explored whether two factors could help explain this – real wage growth for the bottom half of the workforce remains positive in 2021 (and perhaps the CTC, other investments helped here too), and the spiking parts of the inflation we are seeing – gas, car related activities – are a much bigger problem for exurban and rural GOPers more than more urban Dems. This is an area in need of further study and discussion.