In the end, American voters, like voters everywhere, voted based on their fears and their anger. Gut issues gave Trump a rousing victory. Americans were more worried about grocery bills and paying rent than the end of democracy.
If it was just about the economy as economists see it, America’s economic metrics tell us the economy was, as described by The Economist, “glorious.” It should have given Kamala Harris a landslide victory last week.
A week before the election, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times that the week’s “data release on gross domestic product for the third quarter, the last one before the election, paints a portrait of remarkable economic success.”
David Goldman, a CNN analyst, observed that “by several major metrics, the US economy is on fire, the envy of the rest of the world…Trump will be inheriting a strong economy — on paper, anyway.”
Goldman provides glowing details of how good the economic numbers are:
Jobs: The biggest indicator of economic security is whether or not you have a job, and a historically high percentage of people do.
GDP: The broadest measure of the US economy is booming. Gross domestic product grew at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 2.8 percent last quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported. That’s a healthy pace by any measure and it’s on par with the economic expansion during the Trump administration, when people were feeling much better about the state of the economy. Projected US economic growth for this year remains the strongest of any of the G7 economies, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Paychecks: Workers’ paychecks are growing at a 3.9 percent adjusted rate, a faster clip than inflation, which means the amount of money Americans have to spend is growing. Inflation-adjusted disposable income per capita rose for the 27th straight month, according to the BEA, the longest streak on record.
Consumerism: Despite polls to the contrary, consumers are acting like the economy is great. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of America’s economy, is surging, rising by 3.7 percent last quarter, the highest rate of growth since the first quarter of 2023, according to the BEA. And consumer confidence is on the rise, too — it surged in October by the largest amount in any survey since March 2021.
We experienced something like this toward the end of PNoy’s administration. Under Aquino’s presidency, the nation’s economy grew at the highest rates in decades, and the country was dubbed a “Rising Tiger” economy.
Raul Fabella, national scientist and UP economist wrote that from 2010 to 2016, “poverty incidence had declined from 26.3 percent to 21.6 percent, an almost five percent difference in six years, a remarkable achievement in our neck of the woods and even elsewhere.”
The PNoy administration with 6.2-percent GDP growth was the best performer of the seven administrations. In terms of inflation, the PNoy administration with 2.7 percent was the best performer in price stability among the seven administrations.
PNoy brought down national debt as a percentage of GDP from 47.6 percent in 2010 to only 37.3 percent in 2016, a 10.3 percentage points reduction in just six years.
The Philippines also earned its first investment credit rating under PNoy.
Yet, the Duterte victory in 2016 was seen as a repudiation of the “yellows” or the Aquino legacy. The hatred carried over to the next presidential election that installed a Marcos-Duterte team over Leni Robredo who was seen as representing the “yellow” elites.
Filipinos seemingly rejected the good economic performance of PNoy in favor of Duterte’s campaign of hatred because the good economic numbers of PNoy didn’t flow down to improve the masa’s quality of life.
The gains of a good economy were gobbled up by the economic elite with their malls, condos and call centers and dangerously widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Mar Roxas, PNoy’s anointed successor, was seen as part of the oppressive elite.
In the US, many Americans didn’t feel their financial situation improved over the past four years despite the rosy economic numbers. A friend who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area who voted for Harris nevertheless expressed her dismay: “While I fully support joy, hope and optimism, when you’ve had your job outsourced and can barely buy groceries and gas, then yes, you’d vote for Trump who voices your rage. Joy won’t pay the bills and bring back self-respect.”
Pre-election polls revealed that Americans hold largely negative views about the US economy. Voters consistently said they were driven primarily by concerns about inflation.
The New York Times explains that “inflation also taps into what psychologists call loss aversion: People feel negatively about losses much more than they feel positively about gains. So, although wages have kept up with inflation or surpassed it, people still feel more pained by sticker shock at the grocery store than elated by their gains.”
Will the second Trump administration give rise to human rights violations like what happened here under Duterte? His campaign pronouncements give reasons to worry.
It seems Americans were not deterred by warnings that Trump will become a dictator who will set the Constitution aside as he weaponizes the justice system to run after his enemies. Some seem to be looking forward to it.
Nihilism is clearly at play. There are enough Americans who have become skeptical of the American system that favors big corporate donors and lobbyists and now believe that all social structures need to be destroyed before a new, better society can be developed.
Lesson learned: Good economic metrics mean nothing unless the masa benefits and not just the elites. We need a better measure of economic health than GDP.
Our elites must realize that their personal security is at stake if the wealth gap continues to widen. For us and for the Americans, democracy is under threat until we fix this mess.
Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco.
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