It's an election year, so naturally there will be misinformation aimed at potential voters. While there are encouraging signs that people are getting better at identifying misinformation, there is one type of "fake news" that appears to be particularly harmful to both sides of the political aisle: drawing conclusions based on omitted information or missing context. It's a favorite tactic of politicians that explodes in election years, so let's dig into a few widely circulated examples—one from the right, one from the left.
The image above is from Snopes and was taken from my aunt's Facebook page. It has not been photoshopped and is not a lie. In April 2020, the national average price per gallon of gasoline did drop to $1.77. But the meme's text suggests it's somehow related to decisions made while Donald Trump was in office.
The answer is always "supply and demand"
People love to discuss why gas prices fluctuate, probably because it happens to us every time we go to fill up the tank, but whether you blame high gas prices on corporate greed or low gas prices on Donald Trump’s awesomeness Performance, you are all equally wrong. The primary driver of natural gas prices is fundamental supply and demand. The real reason natural gas is so cheap in 2021 is that global oil demand is down due to economic activity due to COVID-19 lockdowns. It doesn’t matter who is president; The levers that determine commodity prices do not exist in the Oval Office.
This is not to say that government policy has no impact on prices. The surge in inflation in 2022 is caused in part by the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan signed in 2021. It's complicated and there are many other factors at play, but as a general rule, providing more money to the economy to prevent or reverse an inflationary recession will cause inflation, but it will also cause the economy to grow and exit the recession (than inflation rises worse results). Again, this is supply and demand.
Politicians on both sides are lying
However, it’s not just those on the right who are tempted by the fallacy of jumping to premature conclusions. Check out this chart posted by Kamala Harris on Twitter:
Like right-wing memes, this chart isn't inaccurate or Photoshopped, but it's missing the same thing that the gas price photo missed: the coronavirus. Most of the jobs “created” during the Biden administration are the result of people returning to work after being laid off during the pandemic. Adjusted for the coronavirus, net jobs increased by 5.5 million from Biden's first day in office to February 2024. Nice job, but doesn't look sexy on the charts.
Biden said in his State of the Union address that "besides Donald Trump, the only president who lost a job while in office was Herbert Hoover," which is half true (maybe), but only if you ignore to reduce the economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. , and also ignores that we don’t really know the number of jobs lost during Hoover’s administration—the Bureau of Labor Statistics didn’t exist until after Hoover was out of office.
How the same numbers tell different stories
Although Biden was overly optimistic about his own jobs data and interpreted Trump's jobs data in an overly optimistic manner, the opposite conclusion could be drawn based on the same underlying information. In a speech on August 5, Donald Trump said: “In Biden’s first 30 months in office, only 2.1 million new jobs were created, compared to my first 30 months in office. Here, we created 4.9 million new jobs.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, when Trump took office, there were 145.6 million non-farm jobs in the United States, and 30 months later, that number reached 150.8 million (Trump said about himself in this speech Slightly below where he deserves for the first time). When Biden took office, there were 143 million non-farm jobs. By the 30th month of his administration, the number of non-farm jobs had increased to 156.2 million.
Trump isn’t outright lying (for once) – he just wants to have his cake and eat it too. He gave Biden no credit for the jobs he has restored after the coronavirus pandemic and did not hold himself responsible for the jobs lost because of the coronavirus, limiting his assessment to the Trump administration before the coronavirus rocked the economy. within 30 months. As Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Politifact, Trump is saying "everything bad is Biden's fault, and everything good happens anyway."
Spinning numbers to make yourself look better is nothing new, but what if you really want to know the truth? You probably can't.
Which government has a stronger economy?
Although polls show Trump leading Biden by 11 to 20 percentage points on which candidate can handle the economy better, the economy has performed well under Trump, excluding the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. If you don't blame Biden for the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, he's doing well under Biden. (It also depends on what you mean by the economy "doing well.")
Even if you just want to base your vote on which administration is "best for the economy" (as opposed to which candidate is on trial for nearly 100 felonies), that's probably not possible, although we have a guide on how to make that happen The latest data for the target. Everyone dealt with it. The impact of public policy on the economy is such a complex topic, and there are so many people pushing so many agendas — weirdos sharing gas price memes on Facebook, the vice president sharing skewed job charts on Twitter — that You may not understand any degree of certainty. Even if you devote your life to the study of macroeconomics, other economists will have diametrically opposed views.
This leaves us with tribalism and atmosphere, two factors that may always determine U.S. elections. If you're thinking "most politicians are like that, but not my favorite ! They're a straight shooter!" the wool has pulled over your eyes. A political candidate who is truly honest and refuses to deceive and brag will be dead in the water in any election larger than the local school board. Imagine a presidential candidate running on the platform "I can't do anything about the economy; it's supply and demand."
