There’s a narrative out there about how President Trump oversaw a booming economy before COVID. And to some extent, that story is true: the stock market surged. GDP was growing quickly. Unemployment was low.

But that’s not the whole story. As Jon Ogden lays out clearly in this post, wages had stagnated, manufacturing and unemployment weren’t growing any faster than they had been growing before, and indicators like consumer confidence had plateaued.

As I’ve written before, an economy that is booming just for the rich isn’t really booming:

Americans die younger, live sicker, and get worse education than residents of comparatively wealthy countries. . . . if these are the results we get when our economy is booming, what can we expect during the next recession? Why protect a system that isn’t working for most Americans?