OPINION:
Gauging whether the glass is half-full or half-empty is a matter of opinion, and Americans are leaning toward the latter in the Trump 2.0 era.
There are legitimate reasons for the attitudinal downturn, given that President Trump was resoundingly reelected less than two years ago. The harmful impact of the Iran war on gasoline prices and the persistence of taxpayer rip-offs are particularly disheartening.
Still, when conditions begin to wobble toward their worst, it is time to make the best of it. It is, after all, the American way.
Recent public opinion surveys track closely with a September Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll finding only 40% of registered voters approve of Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy, while 58% disapprove.
Objectively, the result is dismal. Put into perspective, though, 25 years have passed since a U.S. president achieved an average approval rating of 50% or better from the electorate.
At the same time, Americans gauging current economic conditions cannot deny that the national landscape is flush with the hue of gorgeous greenbacks. U.S. median household income jumped 2.6% last year alone, reaching $87,460, according to a recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau.
That is the highest level it has reached since the feds started tracking it in 1967.
For Black households in particular, the increase was “a strong 4.8%,” Jared Bernstein, chairman of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a Substack post.
Those figures must turn his former boss green with envy: Black individual income increases averaged less than 1% annually during the Obama administration.
When accounting for income hikes during the first year of the second Trump administration, real wages have outpaced inflation, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted in prepared testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services.
Meanwhile, the national poverty rate, which stood at 15.1% in 2010 across all U.S. age categories, fell precipitously to 10.1% last year — the lowest level on record.
Taken together, rising real wages and falling poverty rates are a clear indication that Americans are becoming wealthier during the second Trump era.
Accordingly, these would seem the best of times — except for some economic pitfalls — both glaring and sneaky. While Americans have thrilled to see larger-than-usual numbers in their paychecks, a dreadful sight is miring their morning commutes in gloom: skyrocketing gas prices lit up in garish neon.
In recent days, the average national cost of a gallon of regular topped $4.40, up from $3.19 a year ago. It is a political principle that when wallets lighten, presidential approval numbers fall.
Even Trump-friendly Fox News finds that 47% of voters believe the president’s war on Iran, which has spiked oil and gas prices globally, will make the U.S. less safe.
Still, were the president to have simply aped his predecessors by twiddling his thumbs while Iran perfected its doomsday bomb, Americans would surely find themselves dreading more than the numbers on the corner filling-station sign.
Less obtrusive is an economic metric that reeks of waste at its worst: the pilfering of government funds. Not simple, garden-variety flimflam, it is an epic graft almost beyond human comprehension.
By its own admission, the federal government wastes $233 billion to $521 billion on bogus payments each year, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. That is money drained from its projected 2026 revenue of $5.6 trillion, requiring Uncle Sam to borrow nearly $2 trillion this year to make up the spending shortfall.
At the top end of the annual fraud, nearly one tax dollar is stolen out of every $10 spent.
When Mr. Trump floated the idea recently of issuing a $5,000 “dividend” check to each American adult, the president’s Democratic Party adversaries pulled out their calculators, tallied the cost of the president’s proposal at $1.5 trillion and cried bribery.
For some, the endless theft of tax dollars by the hundreds of billions is more palatable under a different name: redistribution of wealth. While the fraud hardly induces a raised eyebrow in Washington, its persistence year after year can only worsen the public’s disdain for their overlords in Washington.
Accordingly, some perspective is advised. President Trump’s current 40% approval rating on the economy still beats Gallup’s final approval measure of 34% for his first term. Nevertheless, the president was reelected four years later.
By any measure, these are neither the best of times nor the worst. As our forebears have done in times more unsettling than these, we are called upon to handle the current era by making the best of it.
When the glass takes on the look of half-empty, the American way is to drench it in red, white and blue.
• Frank Perley is a former senior editor and editorial writer for Opinion at The Washington Times.
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