Public opinion polls consistently show the economy is one of the top issues, if not the top issue, for American voters. This may strike some as odd, since official government statistics show low unemployment and declining price inflation, suggesting the Federal Reserve has engineered a “soft landing” bringing down inflation without causing a recession. So why the concern over the economy? One reason is more people are realizing government economic figures hide the truth about the economy.
“Recession Since 2022: US Economic Income and Output Have Fallen Overall for Four Years” is a Brownstone Institute research paper by Dr. E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and Dr. Peter St. Onge, a fellow with the Mises Institute. It details how the federal government understates inflation, while making wages, profits, and economic growth appear stronger.
Dr. Antoni and Dr. St. Onge use a more accurate measure of inflation than that used by government to uncover the true state of the economy. Their calculations show that the US economy has been in recession since 2022. The government claims that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased by approximately 13.7 percent from 2019 through the first half of 2024. When the more accurate inflation number is used, the result is a 2.5 percent decline in GDP.
The federal government’s figures also show the American people’s disposable income increased by 12.9 percent from 2019 through the first half of 2024. However, when the more accurate way of calculating price inflation is used, it shows Americans’ disposable income declined by 2.3 percent. Dr. Antoni and Dr. St. Onge are hardly the first to expose how the government uses doctored statistics to make the economy look stronger. John Williams’s ShadowStats has regularly shown how government manipulates data to underreport unemployment and price inflation.
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