Which recent President has helped the middle class the most? And which has hurt the middle class the most?
We think one of the best measures is real take-home pay for the median-income family - i.e., those right smack dab in the middle of the income spectrum.
Here are the results based on the official Census Bureau data. Trump has the best record. Biden by far the worst.
Amazingly, median income rose more in Trump's four years in office than under Bush, Obama, and Biden COMBINED! And this analysis includes the lockdown year of 2020, which happened under Trump, when incomes collapsed because the economy shut down for almost half a year.
Since Trump only served one four-year term and Bush and Obama served two four-year terms (and the Biden numbers are for half his term), it is also meaningful to look at these four Presidents' records per year in office. Annualized, the middle class did twice as well under the Trump years than under the Obama years. And families have lost income under Biden so far.
Earlier this year our friends at the New York Post called out McDonalds for the slow disappearance of the famous "dollar menu."
It actually recently became the $1 to $3 Menu.
Now, even McDonald’s CEO Joe Erlinger has openly confirmed that inflation has wreaked havoc on Ronald McDonald's bargain menu. He acknowledged that his average menu item costs 40% more than it did in 2019. The average price of a Big Mac meal is now almost $10.
Almost 9 in 10 of Americans eat at McDonald’s at least once a year, but surveys show many lower income Americans are visiting fast food restaurants less because of the rising prices. When even eating at the Golden Arches has gotten too expensive for families to afford, you know Bidenflation is starting to really bite.
3) Conservative Majority on the Supreme Court Is Potentially in BIG Trouble
For all the talk of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the voting record shows three groupings - conservative, moderate/conservative, and liberal. Each group has three members.
This chart from former DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur and University of Central Florida economics professor Dean Jens, shows how often each Supreme Court justice has agreed with one another in decisions since the confirmation of the newest justice, Kentanji Brown Jackson.
The Roberts-Kavanaugh-Barrett centrist block sticks together almost as often as the three liberals appointed by Democrats. The conservatives -- independent thinkers, unsurprisingly -- are the least consistent bloc.
They note: "Roberts and Kavanaugh agreed with each of the liberals more often than they did with Thomas."
What’s worrisome is that if the left wins and Clarence Thomas, the oldest members of the court, who has served 33 years, retires, that conservative voting majority will be in big trouble.
India’s growing economy requires more electricity, and massive subsidies have stoked an explosion in new solar projects. But as with many countries, the results are disappointing.
At first, we thought the video above was footage of President Biden’s weather-damaged $325 million pier in Gaza. But it turns out, it is of the world’s largest floating solar plant, located in Madhya Pradesh, India. The idea behind it is that the solar panels sit on top of floaters, which are designed to adapt to changes in water currents.
The storm that blew out the solar panels came at a time when India is facing its most severe power shortages in 15 years, due to a drop in hydropower generation and delays in newly built coal-fired plants coming on line.
Meanwhile, despite all the happy talk of India reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2070, the trend is in the opposite direction. The graph below shows that India's PER CAPITA emissions are 10 times higher than they were in 1960 and have doubled in just the last 20 years. That’s a lot of CO2 for a country with 1.42 billion people - or five times the population of the USA.
5) Video of the Day: Two Crucial Mistakes That Could Sink Milei in Argentina
Our CTUP co-founder Steve Forbes has words of warning for President Javier Milei, who is touring the U.S. to encourage tech companies to invest in Argentina.
Forbes praises Milei for extolling free markets and slashing government spending. But he warns that Milei is so far making "two crucial mistakes":
1. Delaying the dollarization of the economy even though Argentines hold $246 billion in foreign bank accounts, safe deposit boxes, and mostly undeclared cash. This amounts to over 50% of Argentina's GDP in current dollars that could ease the transition to a dollar economy.
2. Trying to cure inflation by throwing the economy into recession.
