Posted on 05/02/2019 7:38:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
With the economy booming and showing positive signs across the board, it’s something of a mystery why so many people continue to insist that everything is terrible and the world is about to end. That’s the issue being tackled by our friend Andrew Malcolm this week at his new home, Issues & Insights. (Be sure to check out the rest of the site as well. They have quite the stable of reporters and analysts.) The answer is probably to be found in perceptions rather than facts, as so often happens in politics these days.
After the weak growth of that endless Obama reign of error, along comes a New York billionaire businessman who leads a Republican Congress to pass historic tax cuts aimed at the middle class. Almost immediately, as Trump predicted, economic growth took off.
The ranks of employed Americans reached historically high levels while unemployment – even in historically high sectors like Hispanics and blacks — dropped to historic lows, 3.8% nationally. In a tightening labor market, wages grew for the first time this century.
And yet virtually every single major polling organization consistently finds more Americans disapprove of the tax cuts that benefitted them than approve. It’s 49 to 40 in Gallup, 49 to 36 in Pew, 43 to 34 in Monmouth.
Democrats won the tax-cut message battle saying it benefitted mainly the wealthy.
How did that happen? As Andrew points out, a casual study of what cable news and the major newspapers consider newsworthy probably has a lot to do with it. The President himself touts economic growth virtually every time there’s a microphone in front of his face or when he starts on a Twitter binge. But a 3.2 percent annualized first-quarter growth rate doesn’t seem to be “news” to most of the Fourth Estate, so you don’t have those numbers drilled into your head on a daily basis. Thus, when the pollsters come calling, people are saying that the tax cuts only benefited “the wealthy” in many cases.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the leader in the Democratic primary polling race, former VP Joe Biden, is out there repeating lies about the tax cuts. His recent attempt to undercut the economic effects of this policy was so bad that even the Washington Post fact checker had to award him four Pinocchios for it.
But on top of obvious media bias, I suspect Trump is battling something broader and more difficult to define. I’ve definitely sensed a growing tendency toward pessimism, cynicism or doom and gloom among political activists on both sides of the aisle these days. Jokes about how stupid or insane 2018 was were quickly replaced with snide comments about how “that’s so 2019.” I’ve been guilty of it myself.
Perhaps we’ve managed to condition ourselves to expect something awful to happen every day to the point that we’re unable to recognize the good news when it comes along. It’s as if we’re perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop. By all metrics, we are living in what should be considered one of the more encouraging and hopeful periods the country has experienced in years. We should make an effort to focus on that for a while and just brighten up a little.
Trump has butt-hurt the media, and they had it coming. They are not going to say anything positive about him.
I’m an American.
They worked for me.
Why can’t Jazz Shaw stop feeding antifreeze to puppies?
In a word, the publik skrool sistem.
They’ve done their assigned task of propagandizing and miseducation so effectively that few people under age 40 actually understand basic economics anymore.
If people have to be TOLD they are getting more money in their paychecks AND that they AND their neighbors are all working now then we are really in a world of hurt!!! People certainly SHOULD NOT need the media to TELL THEM their lives are better REALLY!!! HotAir FAKE NEWS!!!
Look at the long time Never Trumpsters on Free Republic.
Most of them have never praised President Trump’s tax cuts for most Americans, as per their directions not to.
Because the idiots base their ideology on their tax refunds. If they got the entire tax relief on April 15 they would be singing hosannas.
Almost half of the public pays no income tax. Also, the reduction in income tax rates translated into bigger paychecks, but many did not receive rebates at tax filing time because the benefits for the tax cut are included in the paychecks.
The working man knows they worked.
Because idiots who give the Gov 0 interest loans expected there tax refunds to remain the same even after getting more take home pay:-)
DJT won in 2016 on the immigration issue, not the tax cut issue. He needs to remain focused on that.
Yep - almost all of us saw an improvement...We’re retired but have a decent retirement income aggregate and we saw about $900 reduction in our tax load.
That’s easy one word MEDIA.
Because most idiots only look at their *REFUND*. The IRS should have issued guidance that ALL withholding amounts remain the same.
Literally snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory (perception *IS* reality)
We should completely get rid of withholding, make it illegal. EVERYONE should have to cut a check for their entire tax due amount at once- THEN you’d see real outrage on how much we pay.
I think that’s absolutely right.
Although it would have helped if the administration could say that deficit spending went down as a result of the increased revenues due to the tax cuts stimulating the economy.
Thee President has convinced the rational. The Left, meanwhile, is too busy screaming to think.
The average democrat doesn’t have a job, doesn’t want a job, and doesn’t pay federal taxes. For them the tax cuts didn’t work because they measure success by an increase in their welfare checks, not a job or a decrease in taxes they never paid in the first place.
For the target audience of the MSM it’s easy to convince them the tax cuts didn’t help them because it was directed at creating jobs and letting workers keep more of their own money, neither of which are a desire of the welfare class.
The refund check is the bell Pavlov's taxpayers are trained to salivate over. It takes time to break conditioned responses.
JMHo
Fecause no big refund. Press isn’t gonna tell the truth they had that money kept in their paychecks all year and got it already.
Who says he’s not convincing them?
Just because the media tells you something doesn’t make it true.
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