During his campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden repeatedly insisted that his primary goal as president would be to help the struggling American middle class. “Ordinary middle-class Americans built America,” he declared during a June 2019 Democratic primary debate. Under President Donald Trump’s policies, he said, “too many people who are in the middle class and who are poor have the bottom fall out.” In defining the “middle class” and the “poor,” a good place to start is the median household income. In 2020, the year before Biden became president, the U.S. median was about $67,000, down…
Author: Peter Suderman
Peter Suderman
Peter Suderman is features editor at Reason. He writes regularly on health care, the federal budget, tech policy, and pop culture. Before joining Reason, Suderman worked as a writer and editor at National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, FreedomWorks, Doublethink, and Culture11. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, Vox, Politico, The New York Post, Newsweek, The Washington Examiner, and numerous other publications.
The pandemic was a test of America’s public health bureaucracy. It failed.