The New York Times, February 8, 2020: The hidden depression Trump isn’t helping
President Trump declared in his State of the Union address that “our economy is the best it has ever been.”
Put aside the Trumpian hyperbole, and it’s true that the economy is strong — and that this is critical to Trump’s chances for re-election. The Obama recovery has continued under Trump, with the stock market surging and corporate profits swelling. Just last month, employers added 225,000 jobs.
Private wealth owned by American households and nonprofits has soared just since 2000 by the equivalent of more than $800,000 per household, according to Federal Reserve data. Wow! I feel richer already.
Yet we live in two Americas, and there’s another side of the country that Trump didn’t mention — one that helped elect him but that he has neglected since. In the other America, suicide rates are at a record high in the post-World War II era, and more Americans die every two weeks from drugs, alcohol and suicide — “deaths of despair” — than died in 18 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
