“I will be damned if I’m going to give another nickel to the Netanyahu government” - Bernie Sanders - eviltoast
  • underisk@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    The covid restrictions being gone is only better if covid is gone. Unemployment hasn’t “stayed low the entire presidency” it was one of the highest it’s ever been and only got to this point over the course of two years. If we didn’t get enough of a recession to meet your standard for calling it that, we at the very least got close enough to spark a huge national debate in the media about what constitutes a recession.

    As for covid restrictions, you could at least reinstate a mask mandate or hell even just a recommendation, even if only during outbreaks. And I’m not giving him credit for making unemployment the exact same as his predecessor when he didn’t do anything for unemployment that wouldn’t have happened anyway, under any president.

    • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      The covid restrictions being gone is only better if covid is gone.

      That’s an impossible bar to clear, the next best thing is vaccines so prevalent that covid numbers stop surging and get down to manageable levels. That is what happened, since November of 2020.

      Employment hasn’t “stayed low the entire presidency” it was one of the highest it’s ever been and only got to this point over the course of two years.

      Bidens presidency started January 2021, unemployment at 6.4%. By the end of the year it was at 3.9%. And it has been steady between 3.5% and 4% ever since.

      If we didn’t get enough of a recession to meet your standard for calling it that, we at the very least got close enough to spark a huge national debate in the media about what constitutes a recession.

      We didn’t meet the US definition. The NBER decides, and they say there wasn’t a recession. You are 100% right that the media and political figures were were talking about an impending recession the entire time, and it never happened. That is a good thing.

      • underisk@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        the next best thing is vaccines so prevalent that covid numbers stop surging and get down to manageable levels.

        Then you should credit Donald Trump for that because he’s the guy who expedited the vaccine. He stopped claiming credit for it when his base booed him every time he brought it up. Nevermind that there have been multiple periodic surges since lockdown was ended.

        Bidens presidency started January 2021, unemployment at 6.4%. By the end of the year it was at 3.9%. And it has been steady between 3.5% and 4% ever since.

        This is incredibly disingenuous. It started high because of lockdown and only reached pre-pandemic levels after 2 years. I will not give him credit for something literally anyone sitting in that position, even Trump, would have eventually done. It was not some victory of labor policy, all he did was end lockdown.

        We didn’t meet the US definition. The NBER decides, and they say there wasn’t a recession.

        Barely scraping under some threshold that the US arbitrarily decides is more forgiving for them than the rest of the world is not some huge accomplishment you should be touting. Treating a recession like some binary on/off switch is absurd.