Right out of the gate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was echoed by other debaters as she engaged in class warfare, trying to drive a wedge between Americans when we need to come together.
Warren said the economy was benefiting a “thinner and thinner slice at the top,” yet as Heritage Foundation analyst Adam Michel pointed out, for Americans with high school degrees, the unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been since before the Great Depression.
Warren also bashed oil companies as profit-hungry corporations profiting at the expense of the poor, yet with greater American drilling, gas prices have dropped, and CNN reporter Chris Isidore notes, “Most of the decline is because of falling oil prices, in part thanks to booming US oil production.” This helps families take more summer road trips and it keeps us less dependent on foreign sources of oil, including from the Middle East.
Multiple candidates decried a rise in income inequality, yet as economist Michael Strain wrote, inequality has “narrowed by 5% over the last decade.”
The “pay gap” question asked by moderator Lester Holt was also inherently biased. As I wrote earlier for CNN, that line of thought fails to take into consideration multiple variables that show the gap is nearly nonexistent.
Bottom line is, look at the numbers. Since January 2017, the US economy, as of March, has added nearly 3 million new jobs for women, and during President Donald Trump’s first year in office, the number of American women in poverty fell by nearly 600,000.