It is difficult for people living outside the US to understand the draw of Donald Trump. It has to do with the US economy. No matter what rosy tint we put on economic figures, the US economy is struggling. People believe that Trump has a better chance of helping matters than Mrs. Clinton.
Ed Rogers writes:
Median household income in June 2016 was $57,206 — only $59 more than before the recession began in December 2007. The national debt has increased by almost $10 trillion under President Obama. The debt per taxpayer is now approximately $162,252. And again, the average American household income has gone up by $59. Think about that. As Phil Gramm and Michael Solon point out in their latest smart piece for the Wall Street Journal, “Why this recovery is so lousy,” “average real per capita income grew five times faster during the Clinton recovery, seven times faster during the Reagan recovery and 10 times faster during the Kennedy/Johnson recovery than during the Obama recovery.”
GDP growth for the second quarter of 2016 was a mere 1.2 percent, meaning that “economic growth is now tracking at a 1 percent rate” this year and “an annual average rate of 2.1 percent growth since the end of the recession, the weakest pace of any expansion since at least 1949.
According to Census Bureau data, more firms went out of business than were started, and since 2011, the number of start-ups has only barely surpassed the number of businesses that have closed.
For the first time in 130 years, adults ages 18 to 34 >were found to be “more likely to be living in their parents’ home than they were to be living with a spouse or partner in their own household.
This month, the labor force participation rate was 62.8 percent — the same rate it was in March 1978, the year economic malaise was born.
Ninety-three percent of counties in the United States still have not fully recovered from the recession when factoring in job creation, the unemployment rate, GDP and median home prices in each county across the country.
Clinton might still be experiencing a convention bounce, plus a flurry of self-inflicted wounds from Donald Trump have led to a boost in the polls for her.
It is only August, and there is a lot of time remaining in the race. Trump could become sane — or mute. Clinton needs to find a way to satisfy people’s quest for a leader who “tells it like it is” — and that includes telling it like it is when it comes to the economic deficiencies of the past seven years. So far, she’s doing the opposite.
