When Americans listen to Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech tonight, they need to tune out the thrill-up-the-leg praise from the media and the audience’s stream of verbal bouquets and ask themselves one question: Are they better off today than they were four years ago. For all but a few, the answer would be resounding “no.”

In the only debate between President Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan in the 1980 campaign, just days before the election, Reagan asked what the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government called “one of the most important campaign questions of all time:

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” 

Voters said no, and sent Reagan to the White House with 489 electoral votes and sent Carter home with 49.

Forty-four years later, the question is still relevant, and still yields the same response, because:

• The unemployment rate was 4.3% in July 2024 – the fourth straight month it has increased – compared to 3.5% in February 2020 when politicians and unelected public health officials began choking the economy with pandemic lockdowns. Even though that comparison is bad enough, it’s somewhat misleading, because there are 5 million fewer Americans in the labor force than there were just before the lockdowns. Adjusting for that, the real unemployment rate, which has never been below 4% while the Biden-Harris regime has been in office, would be 5.2% today.
• Inflation has soared, with prices now 20.1% higher since the pair was inaugurated. At the same time, wages have increased less than 17%. As others are pointing out, if this administration had cured the economy, as Joe Biden claimed it had, why are price controls necessary to defeat inflation?
• As Americans have had to dip into their savings to stay financially afloat, the personal saving rate has fallen from 32% in April 2020, an all-time high, to 3.4% in June, one of the lowest ever recorded. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco said in May “Households drew down their excess savings at an average pace of $70 billion per month since September 2021,” then increased the withdrawals “to about $85 billion per month since last fall relative to the average pace for the entire period.” 
• The monthly mortgage payment for a new median priced home is $970 higher than it was in January 2021, says House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, a spike of 85%. In January 2021, the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank’s homeowner affordability monitor value was 106. It hit 68 in May, down for the fourth straight month. Mortgage rates have been higher throughout this administration’s sad run, having nearly tripled.
• Average credit card interest rates, below 15% in 2020, are now 25%, “the highest level in more than three decades,” according to Smith.

Harris and Biden were handed an economy recovering from the authoritarian pandemic responses and put a pillow over its face. There were even two straight quarters of GDP decline – the first two of 2022 – which in most instances is considered a recession (but apparently only when Republicans occupy the White House).

Both Biden and Harris have claimed that Bidenomics have worked. It’s been a lie every time they’ve said it. Remember this while Harris babbles tonight, and be ready for worse if she’s elected this fall.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board