The data show voters are not better off under Harris

It is the biggest question of the election and the first question of last week’s presidential debate . Vice President Kamala Harris refused to answer it. But the U.S. Census Bureau just did.

“When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?” ABC News host David Muir, one of the debate moderators, asked last week.

Harris responded with her bromide-sprinkled world salad about her "opportunity economy."

But there is no avoiding the data in the Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey , which show that, thanks to inflation, the average household is poorer today than it was four years ago.

In the most recent data released this week, the median household income was $80,610 in 2023 compared to $81,210 in 2019. By contrast, the year before former President Donald Trump took office, the median household income was $71,000, which means that in the three years he was president before COVID-19, median household income rose more than $10,000. All of these totals are in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars.

No wonder most voters say they prefer Trump’s economic policies to those of Harris and President Joe Biden.

The Census Bureau found that 2023 saw “the largest annual real increase in rental costs since at least 2011.”

Almost half (49.7%) of renters spent more than 30% of their income on housing. The numbers were even worse for black people, with 56.2% spending more than 30% of their income on rent.

Poverty rose during the Biden-Harris administration last year, up to 12.9% from 12.4% the year before. Earlier reports from the Federal Reserve show that credit card balances and delinquencies are also near all-time highs.

All the economic pain could have been avoided if the Biden-Harris administration had ended the COVID-19 shutdowns instead of unnecessarily prolonging them to con the public into believing its policies fixed the problem. Instead, it triggered near-record inflation with a $1.9 trillion spending binge. Harris wanted it to be $4 trillion, twice as bad.

Between the height of the government’s COVID-19 lockdowns and Trump’s last month in office, the economy added more than 12 million jobs at a rate of just under 1.4 million a month. After Biden took office and slowed the return to normalcy, job growth slowed to 400,000 per month.

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Meanwhile, inflation averaged under 2% during Trump’s term. But the Biden-Harris administration's spending binge boosted inflation to 9.1%. Think what it would have been if Harris had got her way and the number had been $4 trillion.

Voters' perceptions don’t always match reality. But on the economy in the 2024 election, most voters are right: Things were better under Trump. We are worse off now than we were four years ago. Good governance makes people better off. Harris and Biden have done the opposite.