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Excerpt
Atlantic: The great Normalization
"As with crime, the shock took a long time to work its way through the economy. But when it finally did, the change was dramatic. By the end of 2023, America’s unemployment rate, inflation rate, and economic-growth trajectory looked almost identical to what they had been just before the pandemic. (One measure of inflation did tick up slightly in December, but many experts believe that was caused by a temporary lag in the data.) Prices remain higher, of course, even though the inflation rate has returned to normal. But inflation-adjusted wages are rising rapidly and recently surpassed their pre-pandemic levels. Some indicators, such as household wealth, income equality, and women’s labor-force participation, look much better than they did in 2019."
Atlantic: The great Normalization
"The absurdity of Trump as the normalcy candidate is almost too much to bear—especially because the normalcy that voters are desperately craving is, in many ways, already here, and Biden helped deliver it. Many economists now believe that the pandemic stimulus was key to the U.S. economy performing so much better than those of other advanced countries. The stimulus also might have played an underappreciated role in reducing crime by keeping local governments and the community organizations they support afloat. “The only reason cities did not completely fall apart during the pandemic was because of a huge boost in federal funding,” Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton University who studies urban crime, told me. “I’m very convinced that is a central part of the explanation for why violence fell in ’22 and ’23.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/crime-and-inflation-decline-theories/677152/?gift=wUJtKLzU-gjn8OuafZ8mtWxr4h5Mmwwdz1bPlfwielE
https://x.com/DanielJFranco1/status/1749768008002580623