Accentuating the Positive

If you think the news organizations focus on the negative while downplaying the positive, you are right.  They do.  They focus on crime, wars, our deteriorating climate, poverty, cruelty to animals et cetera.

But don’t blame them.  Blame us, the news consumers.  It’s our fault, not theirs.  They know from long experience that if they want to stay in business they must provide us with what they know we’ll read, which history proves is crime, wars, our deteriorating climate, poverty, cruelty to animals et cetera. If they were to focus on the positives we wouldn’t read it and they’d soon be out of business.  It’s sad but it’s true, and it’s why media sources slavishly follow that old newspaper adage:  If it bleeds, it leads.

Nevertheless, there are many positive things happening these days that we should make ourselves aware of, such as the economy.

That’s right, the economy.  The Wall Street Journal recently called the American economy “the envy of the world,” and the Pulitzer Prize winning economist Paul Krugman recently wrote that “the economic news in 2023 was almost miraculously good,” even though most people don’ realize it.

The Dow Jones is up by 40 percent since 2000, and a few days ago it hit 4,000 for the first time in history.  That’s important because it indicates that investors are confident the Federal Reserve will get inflation under control without throwing the country into a recession. Economists say we can credit that to the financial policies advanced by President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

They also say we can thank Biden’s policies for the nation’s booming job growth; unemployment is historically low right now, somewhere below 4 percent.

And as historian Heather Cox Richardson pointed out a few days ago, Biden’s administration has used the power of the federal government to begin unwinding the trickle-down economy that between 1981 and 2021 transferred $50 trillion from the bottom 90 percent of the U.S. to the top 1 percent, hollowing out the middle class.

She writes: “The unemployment rate has been at record lows of under 4 percent for more than two years the strongest run since the 1960s.  Inflation is not rising; it is falling and is now 3.4 percent higher than the Federal Reserve’s preferred mark of 2 percent but down significantly from its high of 9.1 percent in June 2022, just after the worst of the pandemic eased.  At 4.5 percent growth over 2023, wage growth outpaced inflation meaning that although prices have risen workers have come out ahead.  The S&P stock market index went up about 24 percent in 2023 and is up more than 12 percent this year.”

And yet, thanks largely to the fear-mongering reporting in the news media, a recent Harris poll showed that  56 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is in a recession, 49 percent think unemployment is at a 50-year high, 72 percent think inflation is increasing, and 58 percent blame Biden for mismanaging an economy “that is in fact the strongest in the world.”

All that ignorance is happening despite the recent White House announcement that it has just awarded nearly $454 billion to pay for more than 56,000 projects in more than 4,500 communities across the nation. Those projects include repairing more than 165,000 miles of roads and more than 9,400 bridges, funding 95 previously unfunded Superfund projects,  improving more than 450 ports and 300 airport terminals, replacing up to 1.7 million toxic lead pipes, adding more than 8,000 low- and zero-emission buses to our streets, improving the electrical grid, adding 12,000 miles of high-speed internet infrastructure, funding more than 1,400 drinking water and wastewater projects, and exposing internet junk fees.

Biden also announced earlier this month that Microsoft is investing $3.3 billion to build a new data center in Racine, Wis., that will help operate one of the most powerful artificial intelligence systems in the world.  It is expected to create 2,300 union construction jobs and employ 2,000 permanent workers.

But the positive news extends far beyond just the economy.

For starters, news organizations have spent nearly 20 years telling us that the relentless collapse of honeybee colonies could lead to the collapse of civilization if it isn’t stopped, and that was true.  But how often have you heard that it’s stopped?  How many headlines have you seen that tell us the honeybee population is booming, that it is the fastest-growing livestock in the country?  That’s also true.  And that doesn’t even count feral honeybees, which may outnumber their captive cousins several times over.

But that’s good news. Positive news. Therefore not loudly reported.

But again: Don’t blame the news media.  Blame us, the news  consumers.  There is no reason for the news media to go out of business trying to feed us positive news if we won’t listen.

There is so much more going on in  the world that we should feel good about, such  as…

The U.S. murder rate has fallen three years in a row.

Life expectancy in the U.S. is rising again after falling during Covid.

The worst-case scenarios for climate change are unlikely, climatologists now say, as the world moves in fits and starts toward renewable energy.

Global poverty is in steep decline, and it has been for decades.

It looks like gas prices will soon start dropping.

There is still a chance that enough states will adopt the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact before November so that everyone’s vote will count, not just those who live in the seven swing states.

And look at the U.S. Congress.  Adult Republicans in the House appear to have tired of the chaos their party’s far-right faction has been causing, and they’re doing something about it.   They’re ready to punish those GOP members who keep stopping House business by, among other things, preventing bills from reaching the House floor for votes.  And that means that Congress, one of the least productive in American history, is finally doing good things, like clearing the way for military aid for Ukraine to resume

There’s also good news for those of us who prefer democracy over fascism (Biden over Trump).  Nate Cohn, chief political analyst for The New York Times, says that although most polls show Trump leading in most of the seven swing states, a big warning sign is flashing that indicates his lead may not be quite as stable as it looks.  Cohn says Trump’s narrow lead in those states is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, people who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t vote regularly.

In other words, people who know what’s going on favor Biden and people who don’t favor Trump.

That’s important because the election is still nearly six months away and a lot of people who aren’t paying attention right now soon will be, and the indications are that once their eyes are open they’ll vote for Biden, or at least against Trump.

And that doesn’t even take into account Trump’s legal problems.  Legal minds, including former prosecutors, say Michael Cohen’s testimony alone was enough to convict Trump – if the jury believes him.  Cohen’s history of lying to virtually everybody virtually all the time could hurt, but the prosecutors built so much evidence from a parade of other witnesses that supports what Cohen said that believing him this time should be easy.  If they do, Trump is going down.

So, bottom line:  Sure, bad stuff is happening.  But so is good stuff.  And remember,   where we are does not mean we have to stay where we are.   We can get to a higher place if we will, as the song says, accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and don’t mess with mister In between.

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