Quick Take: Recession? What Recession?
Who controls the lexicon controls reality? Um, not so much…
Among progressivism’s less-than-endearing traits—and their name is Legion, for they are many—is its propensity for rebranding. Reality’s not tracking with the new line on gender? Then get rid of that awkward word, woman, when you’re talking about human reproduction! Just replace it with person who can become pregnant and the logical contradictions of gender theory evaporate like dew on the lawn at sunrise in August. And since postmodern progressivism is a totalitarian ideology, its mania for rebranding invades every sphere.
Today we learned that the baseline measurement of the performance of the US economy, gross domestic product or GDP, contracted 0.9% in the second quarter of the current year. This unwelcome news comes on the heels of a 1.6% contraction in the first quarter. That’s six consecutive months of economic contraction: the classical definition of recession. The Biden Administration needed this news like I need a cancer diagnosis.
Wait a minute, though! We have it on the authority of White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre—and she speaks for the President—that six consecutive months of economic contraction does not mean that the US economy is in recession. This must be a recent development, for prior to Joe Biden’s inauguration the above definition was generally accepted by pretty much everyone. But that was before the classical definition of recession became, shall we say, problematical for the Biden Administration. So now a recession is…something else.
In its attempt to redefine this bad news out of existence, the Biden Administration points among other things to the supposedly strong job market. And it’s true that the unemployment rate is only 3.6%. That sounds good. How about wage growth, though? As a matter of fact, the current inflationary spiral is depressing real wages. A 3% or 4% raise when inflation is nearing 10% isn’t a raise at all—it’s workers across the board, steadily losing ground. Moreover, the workforce participation rate sits at an all-time low. Some five million of the jobs that the Biden Administration has created (not really, but that’s a subject for another article) can’t even be filled. Among the factors keeping people out of the labor market is the sad reality that inflation would cut their pay month by month. In such circumstances, what’s the point of working for a living?
The economic travails afflicting the American people render futile all the Administration’s too-clever-by-half efforts to slither out of a truly bad jam. For there’s another definition of recession, one not reliant on the wise men of the National Bureau of Economic Research or the President's media apologists. It’s very simple and it goes something like this: My wife and I both work but we’re losing ground. Our grocery bill is through the roof. We can’t afford new school clothes for the kids. Our rent just got raised. Gas for our vehicles is costing us twice what it used to. Our credit cards are maxed out. And our retirement account has taken a six-figure hit. This economy sucks!
That definition of recession was well established before today’s bummer of a GDP report was released. So now we have six consecutive months of economic contraction to back up the American people’s general sense that the economy’s circling the bowl. And adding insult to injury there’s Karine Jean-Pierre at the podium insisting, “So, the factors that we are seeing right now, the economic indicators, does not, does not show that we're in a recession.”
Seriously, who are you going to believe?