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USA: Metrics for a presidential report card
Shortly after the election I saw a cartoon on Facebook titled "Let's Get A Baseline". It listed various prices for common goods and other assorted statistics. I looked up a few, and those were incorrect.
A sort of "presidential report card" did seem like a neat idea to me. Something to be reviewed every January 20th. Perhaps in a chart that would make facts speak for themselves in social media.
Are there any magazines or news sources that already do this? Something like The Economist?
These are metrics I would like to see in such a chart, perhaps a bar graph.
Please suggest others that you think ordinary voters would care about
- National debt
- Inflation
- Unemployment
- The GDP
- The literacy rate
- National match scores ( compared globally )
- The poverty rate
- Administration members indicted
- Average price of gas
- Average yearly salary
- Average retirement savings
One thing that I dislike about this idea is that it overrates the powers of the executive. There are 3 branches of government, and acting like the president is some sort of dictator undermines checks on the others, and allows blame to be shifted. Secondly, you should really be comparing against the counterfactual of what would've happened with some other president (maybe comparing against other countries is a good proxy), as blaming a president for (e.g.) a pandemic's effect on the economy feels unfair to me, even if you can blame their handling of it
Oh also in addition US has stuff devolved to the states which makes it even more messy for some things
A lot of these can be obtained from the fred, which is an economic data tracker run by the federal reserve. It's all out in the open. Pick some charts that align with the type of data you'd want to track, then mark the inauguration dates.
Inflation
Total Public Debt
Unemployment Rate
GDP
Literacy Rate (I had to go to the world bank to get the US stats on this)
Poverty
Gas Price
Salaries (There's so many different ways to track this)
Savings
I'd like to see some stats that are more representative of life for the general population:
So rather than GPD - how about median income, individual and family, compared to that growth. And rather than the unemployment rate - we could look at a job quality index that presents a ratio of high-quality jobs (full-time, benefits, livable wages) to low-quality jobs (gig work, part-time, no benefits).
I think most of these are a little harder to get data to quantify, so I'll try to poke around to find or calculate some actual stats and come back with an edit later in the week. Also, echoing @saturnV that this would be a bad proxy for a presidential score - hopefully most of the impact they have happens after they leave office (if they are thinking and acting with long term impact in mind) and that there are many hands on the levers of power in the US. But they are a great indicator for how we're trending as a society or country as a whole which should give us some ideas on how to course correct. If support for Luigi is any indicator, I would assume that many of these indicators are not seeing positive growth.
I've added my chosen 10 below:
1. Median Wage vs. GDP Growth
Metric: Growth in median wage compared to GDP growth over the same period.
Rationale: While GDP measures the economy's overall size, median wages reflect the experience of the average worker. Comparing the two reveals whether economic growth translates to improved earnings for workers.
2. Wage Share of GDP
Metric: The proportion of GDP allocated to wages (total wages paid divided by GDP).
Rationale: A declining wage share suggests that a smaller portion of economic output is going to workers, even if GDP is growing.
3. Median Household Income Adjusted for Inflation
Metric: Inflation-adjusted growth in median household income.
Rationale: Median household income better reflects typical family earnings and how they keep up with living costs over time.
4. Cost of Living vs. Median Wage Growth
Metric: Growth in the median wage compared to a composite cost of living index (housing, healthcare, childcare, transportation, and education costs).
Rationale: This shows whether wage growth is sufficient to cover rising living expenses.
5. Real Disposable Income per Worker
Metric: Median wage minus taxes, adjusted for inflation.
Rationale: Focuses on what workers actually have left to spend after tax obligations.
6. Wealth Distribution by Quintiles
Metric: Growth in wealth by income quintile, especially focusing on the bottom 50% vs. the top 10%.
Rationale: Wealth disparities often provide a clearer picture of inequality than income.
7. Labor Share vs. Corporate Profits
Metric: Changes in labor's share of income compared to corporate profit growth.
Rationale: This reflects how much economic output is going to workers vs. shareholders.
8. Job Quality Index (JQI)
Metric: Ratio of high-quality jobs (full-time, benefits, livable wages) to low-quality jobs (gig work, part-time, no benefits).
Rationale: Tracks whether job growth consists of meaningful employment opportunities or precarious, low-quality jobs.
9. Debt-to-Income Ratio
Metric: Median household debt compared to median income.
Rationale: Highlights financial vulnerability and whether income growth is sufficient to reduce debt reliance.
10. Access to Benefits
Metric: Percentage of workers with employer-provided healthcare, retirement plans, and paid leave.
Rationale: Goes beyond income to assess overall economic security.
I like trying to assess things that impact people, but what about non-monetary things?
Voting rights?
Measures of freedom (these exist already)
Mental health of the population
Etc.
I love all of these! My head went off in a financial/benefits based on the initial ones proposed, but I agree it's really important to capture some of the tangible "intangibles". I'll give a noodles to others that fit in this category as well!
Yeah this was just a quick thought. I think we get stuck on the economy without addressing things like civil rights because as the other person noted, it's easier to measure!
Consistent, numerical metrics for those can be difficult. Having them be unbiased and accurate (not created by a specific group angling for specific results while mis-labeling their measurements to imply something other than what they've captured) is another degree of difficulty, and that's not counting that you need them to be measured the same way throughout the years in order for them to be a useful comparison.
Sure they're harder, but I think in many ways they (and other similar measures) matter more than the GDP.
Many groups measure these things already, and we do censuses every year not just in the big ones. We could get that data.
We've already established this year that inflation being "not that bad" actually doesn't matter if people can't afford the same amount of groceries. If I can dream, I'll dream bigger.
Yeah, but that long parenthetical was basically me saying that I think they pretty much all do a shitty, biased version of what they claim to measure. Most of those quantitative measures of qualitative factors are not at all measuring what they purport to, and the ones that get close are still cherry picking the statistics to only provide one version of what they state (e.g., how do you compare a country with totally free elections but everyone is locked inside with no freedom of speech to a country with no elections whatsoever but everyone is allowed to do or say whatever they want?) and the method for measuring them is open to manipulation (e.g., does a country that widely publicizes its issues but has relatively few compare favorably to a country that completely ignores and no one reports on its myriad issues?).
I still don't know that we have established that. We've heard plenty of stories of people struggling, but there are 335 million people in the country. I am extremely empathetic to those who are struggling, and I don't necessarily disbelieve the narrative, but I have not seen any statistics showing that more people are actually worse off. I've seen that people's perceptions of the economy are worse and I've heard more stories of how people are worse off, but I've also heard more stories of how migrants are eating the dogs and eating the cats. I will reserve actually believing that these claims apply to the country as a whole for when I see actual evidence that is properly directed, not cherry picked, and authoritative.
The best I have seen is one set of numbers saying "look, things are better than you think!," another set saying "no, they're not as good as they say," and yet another saying "things aren't actually as bad as those other guys are saying."
What I do know is that median full-time, year-round median wages increased from $52,000 in 2019 to $59,228 in 2024 (14% increase) while inflation rose about 23%, so there is a good chance that it's true, but those numbers don't tell the absolute whole story, so I can't say anything with certainty.
Sure, but like I said, if I'm going to dream, I'm going to dream for a measure that actually represents things beyond the financial. The economy isn't the end all be all of a presidency, plus presidents often are dealing with what was handed to them rather than some sort of blank slate.
Looks good to me!
I would cut gas prices. People care about it but it's a bit deceiving. It's obviously not the whole story, but an administration that successfully brings about a population that's doing well economically will be more likely to spend money on travel (drive more often, use more gasoline), drive up demand, raise prices, make it look like the administration is failing economically.
As I said, macroeconomics is never that simple, especially when it's global and driven by an international cartel, but it definitely has extra layers of abstraction where what looks good could be bad and vice versa.