Decision 2024 is just around the corner, and the American people have two very different visions of the future to choose from. In the second part of a two-newsletter series, we are examining what the economy will likely look like if shaped by a second term President Joe Biden from 2024-2028.

You can read the previous installment on how a second term for President Trump would likely impact the economy here.

The Track Record

As in all statistics, everything is a matter of when you start measuring, and when you stop measuring.
The White House continues to use words like “historic,” “successful,” “booming,” and “growth” to describe President Biden’s economy, yet Gallup reports that the people’s confidence in Biden’s economic stewardship is “historically low,” the lowest of any president since they began asking the question in 2001. So how is it that only 26% of Americans regard the economy as “good” (and a plain majority calls it “poor”) while the Biden administration claims that it has created 15 million jobs?

It’s a matter of when you measure.

Because the economy went into an artificial coma during the COVID lockdowns just before Biden took office, essentially, Joe Biden took credit for all of the businesses opening back up, calling it “creating jobs.” This is in spite of the fact that Biden’s administration fiercely opposed states choosing to open up for business and bring those jobs back online.

Unfortunately, this is a pattern in the White House’s reporting on the economy during President Biden’s tenure. Many of the numbers sound great but wither under scrutiny. In order to get a real idea of Biden’s economic track record, we need to exclude the re-opening after COVID, and look at other material conditions.

Inflation is up over 20% since Biden took office. Real wages have decreased by over 2.5%. The Biden admin touts average GDP growth of 3.4% during his tenure, but again, this is somewhat dishonest. COVID lockdowns put the GDP to artificial nadirs during 2020, so average growth should have, in this writer’s opinion, actually have been far higher, to offset the losses. The GDP numbers begin looking anemic when we account for the artificially low benchmark at the beginning, and the incredible amount of government spending driving the GDP figures up. (Check out this chart to see how dramatically COVID’s lockdowns influenced the averages.) Even with the government spending like there is no tomorrow, GDP came in at just 1.3% in Q1 of this year, while inflation was nearly three times that figure over the same period of time.

To be fair, neither Trump nor Biden seem to have serious plans to combat the ballooning national debt, but as we are discussing Biden in this week’s issue, it’s worth pointing out that Joe Biden has spent and borrowed recklessly, sprinting towards the fiscal cliff. U.S. interest payments on debt, under Biden, surpassed defense spending and Medicare, respectively.

Joe Biden’s economic track record has not been great.

That’s an understatement. His track record has been abysmal. The only silver lining, perhaps, is that unemployment has remained low – though there is some number-fudging going on in the White House’s jobs reports. Some sources say the real unemployment rate is not 3.9% but more likely between 6.5 and 7.7%.

The Agenda

President Biden’s reelection campaign presents November’s contest as a battle between two very different economic futures. Here are the President’s stated priorities for a possible second term:

• Lowering costs for the middle class.
• Cutting health care premiums and prescription drug costs.
• Lowering energy prices.
• Raising the corporate income tax.
• Instituting a 25% minimum income tax on billionaires.
• Cracking down on tax cheats.

The Biden campaign has vowed that “the days of trickle-down economics are over.”

The Good

Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare now has the ability to negotiate on some prescription drug prices. This could, theoretically, cause some prescription drug costs to come down for many Americans.

The numbers that the White House reports on this issue are almost certainly wildly optimistic, but increases in corporate tax rates could possibly increase the federal government’s tax revenue, which would help with the national debt if that money was handled responsibly.

Domestic oil production has been up to record highs recently.

The stock market is up. (Though this does not tend to correlate with what party is in the White House. The market as a whole is more complicated than policies affecting one specific sector or stock.)

The Bad

I’m going to be honest; there’s a lot of bad.

Like former president Donald Trump, some aspects of Joe Biden’s economic agenda seem to be willfully ignorant and/or deceptive. Biden claims he will institute a 25% minimum income tax to make sure billionaires pay their fair share in taxes: But billionaires don’t make their money through “income” as we think of it. Many billionaires, such as Elon Musk, finance their lives via debt, and money that is kept in markets and real estate is rarely realized as income. If, as some members of his administration have proposed, Biden gets around this by taxing unrealized gains, he might just crash the entire economy. The middle class would be hit hardest, as increasing property values for primary residences would show up as a bill every year, and home ownership would become even rarer than it is today.

In other words, the billionaire minimum income tax thing is either an empty gesture or one of the worst instances of economic malpractice the world has ever seen.

Republicans have warned, meanwhile, that “cracking down on tax cheats” really means, in practice, crushing innocent middle-class Americans with greater tax burdens and uncertainty.

While Biden promises to lower costs for the middle class, the reality is that costs for the middle class have increased dramatically under Biden’s tenure, and his plans moving forward do little to nothing to materially change this continued trajectory. Things are so bad that Yahoo Finance lists things like “New Cars,” “Private School,” Home Ownership,” and “Healthcare Costs” as things that the middle class will not be able to afford in the next five years.

The poverty rate more than doubled under Biden. Under Trump, by contrast, the poverty rate hit a record low.

Under Biden, 1/8 of the population uses food stamps.

Conclusion

The possibility of another Biden term is unlikely to ease financial pressure for the average American, as more and more middle-class households fall below the poverty line, apply for government assistance, spend on credit cards, and abandon their dreams of ever owning a home. The Biden administration has shown little understanding or willingness to enact real change that would alter the course the United States is currently on. Even the current upsides of the economy – a booming stock market and elevated oil production – are double-edged swords, as the administration has continually struck down new drilling requests, which could lead to a sharp decrease in oil production capacity, and many warn of over-speculation driving a market bubble that could cause devastating consequences if it pops.

In other words, the economy is not a strength for the Biden White House. Four more years, according to the president’s stated economic agenda, is a promise for four more years of the same, and worsening, conditions.

Quick Hits

---

• Christianity Today calls for more churches to support their local crisis pregnancy care centers.
• After a week of volatile trading and a precipitous drop, CNN Business declares that “The Nvidia Spell Is Broken.”
• Is television drying up? Forbes explains the shrinking rewards for creating a hit T.V. show.
• Trying to get in touch with the IRS? Good luck. The Wall Street Journal reports that 2/3 of taxpayers who reach out for help can’t get on the phone with a human being.
• Business Insider reports that the U.S. Housing market is heading for a correction.