Opinion | Why Are Americans Still Down on the Economy? - The New York Times

Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Honestly, I didn’t think Republicans were going to try replaying Ronald Reagan’s famous line, since so much of the G.O.P.’s 2024 strategy depends on a sort of collective amnesia about the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency. Is it really a good idea to remind voters what the spring of 2020 was like? For it was a terrible time: It was a time of fear, with Covid deaths skyrocketing. It was a time of isolation, with normal social interactions disrupted. It was a time of surging violent crime, perhaps brought on by that social disruption. It was a time of huge job losses, with the unemployment rate hitting 14.8 percent that April. And do you remember the great toilet paper shortage? Also, when Reagan delivered that line in 1980, things were pretty bad, with 7.5 percent unemployment and 12.6 percent inflation, and the 1979 gas lines were still fresh in memory. Today, unemployment is below 4 percent and inflation is around 3 percent (

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