Why Americans are ‘unhappy,’ how Biden drags US down

Economist: Why Americans Are ‘Unhappy’

President Biden claims he’s building the economy from the “middle out, the bottom up,” scoffs at Lawrence Kudlow at The New York Sun, yet “what does that mean? No one knows.” How about, “A rising tide lifts all boats”? Sorry, Biden’s a “stuck-in-the-mud class warrior.” Yet, for the bottom quartile of income earners, real average weekly earnings have dipped 2.3% thanks to “Bidenomics”; the second quartile, 3.9%. Biden’s “spent $6 trillion, raised taxes,” generated “$500 billion worth of new regulations, waged war on fossil fuels.” Consumer prices are up 15.6% over his two years. An AP/NORC poll shows just 34% of voters approve of his economic policies, but is there any wonder why the “country is unhappy”?

Education beat: How To Reverse Learning Loss

Richmond, Va.’s pandemic-related learning “losses are significantly worse than most other majority-black school districts,” but, frets Michael Hartney at City Journal, its school board refused to extend the school year because black students would be “chained to their desks” while their peers elsewhere got to enjoy summer. “If providing more instructional time is akin to ‘chaining kids to desks,’ one wonders what being unable to read feels like.” Parents don’t seem to understand the problem: A 2022 Learning Heroes survey revealed more than 90% of parents “believe their children are performing on grade level, even as data show the opposite.” They should realize that “if we don’t want to consign the pandemic cohort of students to something resembling second-class citizenship, we need to make them lift some heavy academic weights.”

Conservative: How Biden Drags US Down

“The American post-Cold War order from the Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush administration is over,” thunders Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness. President Biden has overseen a “moral and material collapse of U.S. foreign policy.” China “plays chicken with American warships” and sends a spy balloon “across the continental United States.” The Biden administration response? “To contextualize Beijing’s aggression” or “ignore” it entirely. “U.S. arms stockpiles are drained.” Biden “desperately sought to revive the failed Obama Iran deal” and “abandoned billions of dollars in military hardware” in Afghanistan. “It would be hard for a Chinese or Russian strategist to come up with a record better than Biden’s to emasculate America’s military and radically reduce its global stature.”

From the left: Seeing MAGA Everywhere

“ ‘If you’re not with us, you’re MAGA’ has been a central propaganda concept for years,” gripes Racket News’ Matt Taibbi, “but the campaign press’s latest effort at expanding the definition of a ‘Deplorable’ is coming hard and fast via coverage” of RFK Jr. “Instead of making any real effort to understand where” disgruntled voters are “coming from,” reporters “push the line that distrusts institutional authority = MAGA.” Yes, “a fast-growing number of Americans loathe ‘experts and institutions.’ ” But reporters keep “missing the part where voters have a million good reasons to feel that loathing.” Now a person can have the honor of joining the MAGA ranks for offenses ranging from not believing Russiagate to opposing mandates or Internet censorship. Are we all deplorable now?”

Libertarian: Canada’s Savvy Immigration Move

“Canada is taking note” that Washington “doesn’t make it easy for talented foreigners to permanently settle in the country” and is adjusting its own policies to poach them, warns Reason’s Fiona Harrigan. it can take years for “highly skilled, highly specialized laborers” to get a US green card. They also have “much less job mobility than similarly skilled American workers,” and their kids have to self-deport if they don’t “secure a different temporary or permanent status.” Meanwhile, Canada has announced a “streamlined” pathway so H-1B specialty-occupation visa-holders in the US can apply for a Canadian work permit, as well as study or work-permit options for family members. “Until the U.S. gets its act together, our loss will be other countries’ gain.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board