What the Dow Jones Hitting 40,000 Points Tells Us

Last week, for the first time in history, the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 40,000.

Unlike many right-wing commentators, I don’t consider the stock market the best indicator of the economy’s health, or even a good indicator. But it is an indicator. And given the state of American politics, with hyperpartisanship and conspiracy theorizing running rampant, I’d argue that this market milestone deserves more attention than it has been getting.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but do you have any doubt that Republicans, across the board, would be trumpeting the Dow’s record high from every rooftop if Donald Trump were still in the White House?

The background here is the gap between what we know about the actual state of our economy and the way Trump and his allies describe it.

By the numbers, the economy looks very good. Unemployment has now been below 4 percent for 27 months, a record last achieved in the late 1960s, ending in February 1970. Inflation is way down from its peak in 2022, although by most measures it’s still somewhat above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. U.S. economic growth over the past four years has been much faster than in comparable major wealthy nations.

Yet Trump says that the economy is “collapsing into a cesspool of ruin.” How can such claims be reconciled with the good economic data?

Well, the numbers I just cited come from official agencies — the Bureau of Labor Statistics (which produces labor market data) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (which estimates gross domestic product). And if you were a hard-core MAGA partisan inclined to conspiracy theories — but I repeat myself — you might tell yourself that the good economic numbers are fake, concocted by a corrupt deep state to help President Biden win the election.