Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas.
You know what my fantasy today is? That we, America, as a country, would mutually celebrate yesterday’s strong economic reports.
“Numbers released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is part of the U.S. Federal Statistical System producing data and official statistics, show that the U.S. economy grew by an astonishing 6.9 percent annual rate from October to December 2021. That puts the growth of the U.S. economy for 2021 at 5.7 percent in 2021. Despite the ongoing pandemic, this is the fastest full-year growth since 1984.
At the same time, the U.S. added 6 million jobs in 2021, pegging the unemployment rate below 4%.
Economists predict that in 2022 the economy will continue to grow at a much higher rate than the 1.8% policymakers generally expect, expanding at 3.9%.”
Isn’t this all good news for the country? Shouldn’t we be happy? Celebratory? Enjoying some positivity after the past years of darkness?
Nope. The media plays the old game of ‘Yeah but what about this? What about that? Biden in trouble. Citizens unhappy.’ Trying to create conflict in the midst of renaissance. Helping to keep us fearful.
And the Republicans? Crickets. It’s certainly nice and easy to blame Biden for bad news. And you certainly rush to credit him with all perceived failings, real, imagined or manufactured. But to acknowledge some success seems impossible for your party.
We should all be happy that things are looking up. Yes there’s inflation. Yes the labor market is going through recalibration. Yes there are still supply issues that are slowly being resolved. But these things will be worked through. We have too many smart people working on it not to succeed.
Even though I’m not certain what efforts by the GOP brought any of this success about, please try and be happy for the country.
Although I guess taking credit for portions of the BBB bill when it benefits your states is a backhand acknowledgement of success.
Don’t you wish you’d actually voted for it?
