Propaganda machines take hostages. One hostage is the good news about our economy.
The good news is everywhere. Job numbers are excellent. For December, 312,000 new jobs. And 419,000 new workers joined the work force. For the year, 2.6 million new jobs.
Unemployment numbers are excellent. The rate is extremely low. It is at, or near, record low for blacks, women and Latinos. Our labor participation rate is 63.1 percent – a huge improvement. Various figures on small business are positive, positive, positive.
Meanwhile, wages are up 3.2 percent from last year. And inflation is low. That means people really do have more in their pockets to spend. After years of flat wage growth.
The job numbers are good for all major sectors. Healthcare, retail, construction all show big improvements. As does manufacturing. We have nearly 300,000 more manufacturing jobs today than we had last January.
Meanwhile, consumer spending at Christmas was the highest in 6 years. Meanwhile, the tax cuts have virtually paid for themselves. The growth in the economy has funneled that much in new tax revenues to Washington. (While government has increased spending by over 10 percent, hiss, boo.)
Meanwhile, interest rate rises are moderating. That will help the economy. Meanwhile, there are few signs of recession. Meanwhile, a lot of big media snivel about recession coming soon. There is a simple reason they do.
Big media is heavily entwined with the Left’s propaganda machine. And the Left simply cannot afford to admit the economy is doing so well. Hell, it’s roaring!
The Left and Never-Trumpers cannot concede the economy is vibrant because they cannot afford to give any credit to evil Trump. After all, we will have an election in 22 months.
They cannot concede the economy is extremely healthy. Because they are embarrassed. The following folks laughed at, scoffed at, derided Trump’s economic plans: President Obama. Candidate Hillary. Joe Biden. The Left’s top economic advisors. Left-wing economists like Paul Krugman. Talking heads from across the left-wing media.
The Left are embarrassed. Humiliated. President Obama more than most. He did more than disagree with Trump’s promises. He sneered at them. The only sector where jobs numbers grew consistently under Obama was government. Manufacturing jobs fell 210,000.
Pessimist Obama said the manufacturing jobs were gone for good. He taunted Trump with “What magic wand do you have?” His taunting then earns ridicule now. What goes around, and all that.
Trump’s magic wand was made of policies Obama and his advisors said would flop. Pro-growth tax cuts. Culling tons of regulations that smothered entrepreneurs and other businesses. Opening up the energy sector. Re-negotiating trade deals.
Nah. Cannot be done. Stupid. That was the message from Obama and the Left. We cannot grow more than 2 percent per year. We cannot grow jobs at higher rates. We have to live with high unemployment. It’s the “new normal” they told us.
The Left screamed against the tax cuts. Predicted gloom and doom from them. Well, they are working. The Left wailed against new trade agreements. Cannot be done, they assured us. Well, they are done, with more to come.
The Left railed against standing up to China. China will retaliate and crush us. Well, China is coming around, making concessions. With more to come. (By the way, our timing was perfect. China’s economy is sagging. This increases pressure on them to make concessions. They need our business far more than we need theirs.)
This is why the Left are embarrassed today. This is why they and big media virtually ignore the great news bursting from the economy. They cannot acknowledge the Left got a lot of economic policy wrong. And that Trump and his crew got a lot of it right. They cannot afford one ounce of humility.
This is why economic gurus from the Left predict recession looms on the horizon. They scour the country for any discouraging sign. Hell, recession always looms on the friggin’ horizon.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters are doing cartwheels over the economy. That too makes it difficult for the Left to say much that is positive about it. They dislike Trump supporters jamming it up their noses. You can hardly blame them.
Imagine if big media were not the puppets of the Left. Imagine if we totally stripped politics from the news about the economy. If that miracle ever came about we might get a different message. It might be something like: Y’know, nothing is perfect. No one has all the answers. There is a lot of exaggeration from both sides. But the current policies have a lot going for them. And the policies we had before may have been the wrong ones for the times.
Coming to an NBC or CNN or NY Times? Now that would be a miracle.
PS: You can buy my novel at Amazon. THE LAST COLUMNIST.
From Tom…as in Morgan.
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