The 2022 Economic Report of the President is finally out. It was released on April 14, the latest ever.
Here’s an interesting passage from page 42 of the ERP:
Official estimates for the year 2021 will not be released until late 2022, but in 2020, the poverty rate fell to 9.6 percent from 11.8 percent in 2019, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for the resources that many low-income households receive from the government (Fox and Burns 2021). Declines in poverty were even larger for particular racial and ethnic groups, with the supplemental poverty rate among Black and Hispanic Americans falling by 3.7 and 4.9 percentage points, respectively (figure 1-8).
Accompanying it is the table at the top of this post.
The paragraph quoted above is accurate. But notice what they don’t say. They don’t talk about the huge drop in black and Hispanic poverty from 2017 on. I think part of the reason is the 2017 tax cut. But whether you agree with me or not about the cause, the point is that they focus only on the part that they can arguably attribute, at least in part, to the huge federal subsidies in 2020.
Update: This got picked up in the Wall Street Journal‘s “Notable and Quotable” (April 28 print edition.)
READER COMMENTS
Kevin Corcoran
Apr 26 2022 at 9:56am
Jason Riley just released a new book called The Black Boom where he argues that the economic conditions of black Americans made the fastest and largest gains in the history of the country from 2016-2020, and that this fact, instead of being pointed out and celebrated, was largely ignored by the media and intelligentsia because it occurred during the Trump presidency. Disclaimer – I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know whether or to what degree Riley credits these improvements to specific policies attributable to Trump, or how much of it he describes as simply occurring while Trump happened to be in the White House.
I believe that in general, presidents are given far too much credit and blame for economic events that occur during their administrations. If I had to pick one trend in the media that most increases my risk of facepalm induced injuries, it would be the tendency to take a statement like “X number of net jobs were created while Z was president” and characterize it as “President Z created X number of jobs during his administration.” Those two statements aren’t within a light year of each other! But because so much of political discourse acts as if the President is “in control” of the economy, it creates this situation where people refuse to acknowledge anything good that happened while Someone From The Other Side was in the White House, because to acknowledge such good news would be to Give Ammunition To The Enemy.
David Henderson
Apr 26 2022 at 11:31am
Thanks, Kevin.
It looks as if Jason Riley is on a roll. I like his work in the Wall Street Journal. So my guess is that there’s a lot to his story.
Re presidents getting undue credit, I agree. I do think, though, that Carter should get credit for deregulating airlines, trucking, and railroads, Reagan should get credit for ending price controls on oil and gasoline, Clinton (and Newt Gingrich) should get credit for reining in federal government spending, and Trump should get credit for a very good tax cut bill and for deregulating. I’ve written here before about Casey Mulligan’s book on Trump’s economic policies. I still highly recommend it.
Jon Murphy
Apr 26 2022 at 11:10am
I’ve not read the Economic Report of the President before. Is it unusual for them to only report a single year data point like they do on page 42? Do they usually put things in context?
David Henderson
Apr 26 2022 at 11:28am
You wrote:
Two data points. 2019 and 2020. 🙂
But yes, I think it is unusual.
You wrote:
I don’t think there’s a “usual.” These documents are always political documents to some extent. Even the best ERPs tend to give undue praise to the presidents they work under. But I do think the complete ignoring of what a graph shows is unusual.
Jason Riley
Apr 27 2022 at 9:41am
Professor Henderson,
Thank you for the kind words. I hope you get a chance to read “The Black Boom” at some point. It cites your work.
Best,
Jason Riley
David Henderson
Apr 27 2022 at 10:58am
You’re welcome, Jason, and thank you for your comment.
You have definitely increased the probability, by a large margin, that I will read The Black Boom. 🙂
Comments are closed.