A healthy U.S. economy is finally emerging from inflation’s shadow, enabling Americans to see and feel its underlying strengths. Is the good news coming in time to give Vice President Kamala Harris a boost in the November election?
Normally, a vibrant economy lifts political incumbents, but polls show U.S. voters are still preoccupied with high living costs. Harris offers a slew of proposals for driving down the cost of housing, food, health care and other necessities.
That’s essential, but with inflation and interest rates falling, Democrats have a stronger economic hand to play. They can point at growing evidence that working families are benefiting from the U.S. economic boom, and point out that Donald Trump’s slapdash economic ideas and frantic pandering threaten to derail it.
Research by my colleague Michael Mandel shows that with inflation easing, wages for working-class Americans have risen higher than they were on Election Day 2020. In other words, U.S. workers are better off today than they were under Trump.
In addition to milder headwinds from inflation, Mandel attributes the rise in real wages to a revival of U.S. productivity growth, driven by a combination of strong government and corporate investment since 2020.
