I love how some stories are passed down through the generations. My mom told my sister and I that when she was little she would go to the store and buy candy for pennies (full of candy, none of that "fun" crap). I told my kids that my sister and I went to the Landhope Farms store outside of West Chester and bought 25 cent candy. My kids go to the same store now (although it's no longer Landhope) and the bars are $1.
(By the way, my oldest son had a bus that picked him up at the top of our hill and dropped him off at the end of the block. So he could tell his kids the truth: he had been up there. One time it snowed.)
The candy stories are the background context to show what we are up against;
It will be hard to ignore the rampant inflation that has been in almost every news story and shopping trip in 2021 and 2022. Inflation has had a real impact on our ability to shop. Even though wages grew at a high rate, inflation outstripped that growth, reducing our real purchasing power or "real wages."
Then, in the second half of 2022, inflation cooled, but wages continued to rise. Real wages are higher now than before the pandemic.
This has not prevented us from suffering a kind of collective myopia. Although polls show that most people believe that they are doing well on a personal level, these same people believe that the economy as a whole is doing badly.
But the point is that we are an economy. Each of us
Somehow we think bad things happen somewhere else. For example, very few people thought there was a problem with the 2020 municipal elections, but many believed there was something wrong with the 2020 elections elsewhere, despite the failure of court cases, recounts and "all judicial investigations". .
Let's look at some economic data.
In September, Chester County's unemployment rate was 2.3%. This is the lowest rate since Bill Clinton was president. This is the fourth lowest level since the Reagan era. It's roughly the same story in Montgomery County (2.6%), Delaware County (2.9%), Bucks (2.7%), Berks (3.2%) and Philadelphia, although the rate is higher at 4.1%. than the counties, it is the second smallest. Since 1990 in Philadelphia.
It is worth thinking that we live in a special space, let's admit it, yes, but we are not alone with this kind of data. Pennsylvania's unemployment rate (3.5%) is the lowest since the early 1980s. Nationally, the rate is 3.9%, down from 3.5% before the pandemic, but still the third lowest since 1969.
Real wage growth increased not only across the country, but also among low- and middle-income workers.
The 2023 holiday shopping season is off to a great start, with retailers reporting record sales. Spending more than ever at Christmas is not the usual behavior of a country with a struggling economy.
Inflation has fallen to 3.5%, still higher than the Federal Reserve's 2% target but lower than during most of the Reagan and Bush administrations.
So I think of my mom telling us about nickel candies and me telling my kids about 25 cent candies. Inflation has always been there. Undoubtedly, we have made great strides in recent years. But when inflation cools down, prices don't. It's part of how our economy has always worked. That's why old people can tell such stories.
The economy that Obama and Trump were so proud of has truly recovered. As before, it's not perfect, but the real failure of Bidenomics isn't the data. The real failure is our collective inability to believe that things are going well.
Will Wood is a small business owner, veteran, and pretty decent runner. He lives, works and writes in West Chester.
