Let's go through your response...
Under Trump, the economy went into recession due to the lockdowns, but by the time Biden took office the economy was actually booming.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/19/its-official-the-covid-recession-lasted-just-two-months-the-shortest-in-us-history.html
The real problem occurred with Biden's Tax Stimulus payments. Some targeted stimuli might have made sense, but as is the San Francisco Fed points to that as the point at which inflation took off.
Had Biden not pushed all that incremental spending, inflation would have remained modest, and the economy would have recovered naturally.
The important take home message is you can't get blood from a stone. When your economy is close to capacity more spending simply translates into two things... more inflation and shift in consumption away from citizens to the government... hence, people rightly felt poorer and, on an inflation, adjusted basis the average American is poorer.
Biden came in with a plan, the problem is when things change, plans need to change. Larry Summers, a Democratic economist, saw this disaster and predicted it. You can check the quarter-to-quarter GDP numbers to verify what I am saying. Had Biden spent his energy fixing the logistical problems rather than putting demand on steroids, the economy would have done much better.
As it was, the economy could not handle the sudden surge from government induced demand.
As a result, inflation took off. Ask yourself, given how many unfilled jobs there were when Biden took office, why did we need to goose the economy by giving every American a check, why not limit help to those really hurt by the pandemic? I could see some targeted relief, but that is not what happened.
Coupled with poor policy, was the surge in energy prices which Biden's energy policies contributed to. It will take another few years at least before this energy driven cost inflation works its way through the economy. This winter will be particularly tough as Biden has almost drained the strategic oil reserve. His timing was horrible... absent the Russian Ukraine war and pissing off Saudi Arabia, the impact of his green energy policies might not have been so severe, but the war was real, and you don't piss off the world's largest oil supplier when the second largest one is going to war, and you have a boycott against both the second and the third largest ones. Pretty dumb.
Now let's look at Trump's tax cuts. Trump's tax cuts produced a surge in federal tax revenues. So, if the premise is that Trump contributed to the deficit with his tax cuts, the tax revenue numbers do not support it. Look up federal tax revenues by year, they began surging after the tax cuts were passed and have continued to surge. How can that be?
Well, when you give a company more money, it does one of three things with it...
The company invests the money in more equipment and expands capacity contributing to more jobs and economic growth. If that produces more income, the company pays more in taxes though at lower rates. Some of the money went to these uses, probably less than expected.
If a company buys back its stock, people like me (investors) take that money and invest in other companies that need money to grow), you treat buybacks as a bad thing, but they are a good thing, since you take money companies don't think they need and redeploy it to companies that think they can use the money. You need to look beyond the "buyback" to where the money goes. But also, when a company buys back your stock, you have to pay taxes on the gains... more money for Uncle Sam.
The third option is the extra money goes to employees. Over time, studies showed most of the "windfall" companies enjoyed from the lower tax rates went to employees in the form of bonuses and wage hikes. It took a few years for that to happen, which is why tax revenues have been surging for the last couple of years. A retrospective review by the IRS has shown the poor working and middle classes benefited the most from Trump's tax cuts, not the wealthy. You can research this; the info is online.
Regarding Biden's term, actually because of inflation, a greater percentage of Americans have slipped into poverty... which had been at the lowest level in years before the pandemic and reached the same level as when Trump took office during the pandemic. Inflation can be a killer among low wage workers. Again research, poverty level by year.
What we do know about the last few years is that the wealth of those that own stocks and real estate has soared, while those who don't has declined. At a combined level, things don't look so bad, but when you look at them at a more granular level, the poor have gotten hurt the worst under Biden's policies.
Of course, this year, everyone is getting hurt... real estate is falling, the stock market is down, inflation remains high, debt levels of lower income families is reaching record levels. Let's touch base next year this time, I don't think we will have an "employment recession", but I do think the working poor will continue to lose ground to inflation.
Over 70% of Americans say they are worse off than when Biden took office, yet when you add everything together the overall economy is up slightly. That speaks to an increasing divide between the "haves" and "have nots". I am not sure Americans are going to sign up for four more years of this.
