Choose wisely with your vote
To the Editor:
This upcoming election is going to be a close call. According to many of the polls being taken, the number one issue for many voters is the economy. A Gallup poll on late 2023 showed 53% of Americans thought the Republicans are better at running the economy compared to 39% for Democrats.
A Gallup poll in late September 2024 showed 50% still thought Republicans were better compared to 44% for Democrats.
A single poll question: Do you think the U.S. economy performs better under Republican Administrations? This kind of question may capture voter impressions of economic performance, but it may not accurately reflect what the data of actual performance shows.
Bureau of Labor Statistics since the end of the Cold War show a different picture. There is a stunning difference between the number of jobs created under Democratic and Republican administrations. There were 50 million jobs created in the US under the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations, compared to a paltry 1 million total jobs created under the H.W. Bush, W. Bush and Trump administrations.
Another example is comparing which administrations where more successful in increasing the gross domestic product and wages and reducing the rate of unemployment according to many analysts and the Economic Policy Institute. As reported in the New York Times in February 2021: “Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate 4.6 % under Democratic presidents and 2.4 % under Republicans. The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades.”
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What explains these very different results? Both parties have ideas about what kind of rules, policies and regulations are needed to make government work and to determine who government works for. We know from Project 2025 that Republicans want to take us back to the robber baron era of the 1890s and early 1900s. Those policies led to the market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. It was the rules of the New Deal in 1933 that made the economy work for everyone and not just the oligarchy, that ended the Depression and grew the middle class to include the largest portion of families in history.
How well the economy works for most of you verses only the oligarchy depends on which approach wins this current election. Choose wisely with your vote.
Jane Harrison
Waynesville
