US: “Recession” or “Holistic improvement”?

Source: Wikipedia, with my notations on Republicans 

Interesting. The word “recession” has long been defined as "two consecutive quarters of negative growth”. 

Now that it looks like the US is in a recession, the Biden administration is busily redefining it, so the the US is not in a recession: that it’s more “holistic” and that really everything if fine. As CNN reports: “Who decides we’re in a recession? 8 white men you’ve never heard of”, tossing in the gratuitous racism for good measure. 

Bill Clinton famously said “it’s the economy, stupid”. “The Democrats are better at dealing with the economy, so vote for us” is the message. 

But like so much else, the data do not support it. A while back I gathered data on crime rates, violent and non-violent in the top cities of the US. 85% of the States with the highest crime rates are run by Democratic mayors. 

For economic performance, 65% of the top 20 States in the US are run by Republicans. Statistically significant, because the US states break 50/50 Red/Blue. The above table is to 2019 -- the trend is even stronger since the pandemic: to wit, Red states, which were doing better than Blue ones to 2019, are doing better still coming out of the pandemic than are Blue states. 

Democrats would object, perhaps: “not fair; there are confounding factors”. Which, sure. There are. But if the Democrats are so good at what they say they are -- controlling crime and running state-level economies -- one would expect some evidence of it in the data. Some, surely. In fact we have the opposite: by the data Democrat-run cities and states do worse on crime and worse on the economy. Which is why there’s a rush out of heavily Democrat (Blue) States like California and moving to heavily Republican (Red) States like Florida. 

Ex radical leftie, turned student of homelessness, Michael Shellenberger, has more on the crime issue in his best-selling book San Fransicko.

ADDED: Top Outflow and Inflow cities in the US, from Redfin Real Estate: 

Outflow: San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Seattle, Boston, Detroit.  (All Blue)

Inflow: Miami, Tampa, Phoenix, Sacramento, Las Vegas, San Diego, Dallas. (All Red)