In his Oct. 26 letter to The Public Fourm, Jay Blackett is squinting at his essentially correct data. His conclusion is at best misleading.
I invite everyone to do a computer search on the same indicators Blackett used for the last 10 years. You will see the Dow Industrial Average bottomed in January, 2009, the year Barack Obama became president, and it has steadily increased since. The unemployment rates (all of the ones he used) peaked near the end of 2009 and have steadily decreased since. And, finally, household income dropped for the first two years of Obama’s presidency (the lag due to the Great Recession), bottomed out and then began a steady increase in his second term that has continued since.
The economic policies of Obama and Donald Trump have had their positive impacts, but so have the normal bust/boom fluctuations in economic activity. The boom that began after the latest recession is now the longest ever, but another recession will come sometime. That’s the nature of things.
The positive economic benefits Blackett reported can not be attributed only to Trump. The trends in the indices we saw since Trump took office are roughly the same as the trends we experienced during the Obama presidency. The good news is that Trump hasn’t messed it up. Yet.
The troubling news that Blackett didn’t report is that the current federal deficit, the largest public debt ever experienced, and the trends towards isolationism are likely to have negative impacts on all the good news.
But don’t trust my conclusion, or his, on any of this. Look it up for yourself.
Calvin Boardman, Salt Lake City
Donate to the newsroom now. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax deductible