Campaign journal: How Trump Voters See the Economy
Pundits who don’t get Donald Trump’s appeal ignore “a striking fact: The typical household’s living standard improved during the three Trump years before the pandemic. Under President Biden, Americans have (at best) struggled to keep even with inflation,” observes Roger Lowenstein at The New York Times.
Voters experienced “the pointed rise, after adjusting for inflation, in median household incomes — how the typical family lives — during the Trump years prior to the pandemic: 10.5 percent from 2016 to 2019.”
Whereas under Biden, “in the all-important category of improving living standards, the country did not make progress.”
Whatever economists think of the causes, “voters aren’t economists. They often judge presidents on the basis of coincident economic performance. Jimmy Carter had to deal with serious inflation and George H.W. Bush endured a recession; each was voted out. Mr. Bush’s successor, Bill Clinton, reaped the recovery; he got four more years.”
Eye on the economy: Goodbye, Open Road
“For decades, car ownership has been a trademark of the American lifestyle, with vehicles becoming symbols of freedom, independence and even rebellion, as well as a necessity,” notes Newsweek’s Giulia Carbonaro.
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Buckle up: In just a few years, “cars have become unaffordable to millions.”
Prices “rose to record highs during the pandemic,” with “supply chain disruptions and chip shortages,” and haven’t fallen: New-car prices are up 30% since 2020, and used-car prices have spiked 38%.
One report says Americans need “an annual income of at least $100,000 to afford a car, at least if they’re following standard budgeting advice.”
Crunch the numbers, and you find more than 60% of US households — and 82% of individuals — can’t afford a new car.
So take a seat: America’s “legendary love story with the automobile” might be over.
Libertarian: Teach the Killing Fields’ Ugly Lesson
Horrors such as Cambodia’s Killing Fields some 45 years ago “always are rooted in ideas, typically radical ones that try to implement some utopian vision,” cautions Steven Greenhut at Reason.
The estimated 100 million deaths caused by Communist regimes, like the Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge, “don’t tell the entire story of fear, slavery, and repression.”
Young leftists nurtured in a “university hothouse that divvies up humanity into fixed groups of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’” aren’t taught what happens when officials get unlimited powers.
The “Cambodian nightmare” shows we must avoid “grandiose social experiments” that “upend society.”
Washington watch: The President’s Men Don’t Disappear
“Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s disappearance story will strike anyone who has served in a senior administration role as bizarre,” remarks Tevi Troy at The Wall Street Journal.
Top-level appointees like Austin “don’t even accrue vacation days since they are assumed always to be on the clock.” In DC, “the constant availability” of top aides “has become the stuff of legend.”
No one was more demanding than President Lyndon B. Johnson, who even had a phone “in his bathroom to make sure he could always reach his people.”
LBJ “believed that if the phone rang and you weren’t there, that meant you weren’t at your desk working.”
Although Austin’s absence, unreported for days, was the result of a hospitalization, Johnson would not “have kept him in the cabinet. Neither should Joe Biden.”
Campus desk: Decolonize Harvard’s Faculty
Type “decolonize” into the Harvard-course search box, and you’ll find it in the titles of seven and the descriptions of 18 more, frets Harvard prof Harry R. Lewis at The Harvard Crimson.
“Oppression” and “liberation” come up in more than 80. “Social justice is in over 100.” Word frequency is an “imperfect measure,” but it suggests the curriculum is “heavily slanted.”
And “merchants of hate are repurposing these intellectual goods.” Faculty can “work to mitigate these impacts” by not “carrying their ideologies into the classroom.”
Committees and departments could enforce “standards” for “intellectual diversity.” But at bottom, all that’s required to change the system is “for faculty to exhibit some humility about the limits of their own wisdom.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
Source link: https://nypost.com/2024/01/15/opinion/how-trump-voters-see-the-economy-decolonize-harvards-faculty-and-other-commentary/