As President Donald Trump and corporate media outlets on Friday enthusiastically touted new GDP figures showing that the U.S. economy grew by 4.1 percent in the second quarter of 2018, many economists and progressive commentators were quick to counter the glowing headlines by pointing out that corporations and the rich are feasting on most of the growth while workers see their wages fall.
“You can’t eat GDP. GDP doesn’t pay the bills.”
—Dante Atkins”What the president won’t talk about is that there is slow—and even negative—growth in real wages adjusted for inflation. So if GDP is rising, but wages [are] falling, the money is going to the top,” Timothy McBride, a health economist at Washington University in St. Louis, noted in response to Trump’s celebratory speech on the White House lawn on Friday.
“You can’t eat GDP,” writer Dante Atkins added on Twitter. “GDP doesn’t pay the bills.”
As Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, observed in an analysis of the Commerce Department’s new numbers for the Washington Post, “in our era of high economic inequality, GDP should definitely not be taken as a signal of broad well-being. For that, we have to look at not just how ‘the economy’ is doing, but how all the people in the economy are doing.”
On Twitter, Bernstein pointed out that—even in the midst of steadily rising growth, record-breaking corporate profits, and lofty promises from Trump and GOP lawmakers—most workers are not seeing a noticable boost in their paychecks.
“Any administration would tout a strong GDP report like today’s, but if it’s not reaching workers’ paychecks, which it isn’t, then cease the applause and get to work on policy to reconnect growth to much more broadly-share prosperity,” he said.
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