The Pandemic Welfare State

ABSTRACT: Over the summer and fall of 2024, public opinion polls showed that despite low unemployment, falling inflation, and robust GDP growth, a majority of Americans reported that they were worse off than they had been four years prior, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then in November, despite the fact that Biden administration succeeded in putting together fiscal and monetary policies that led to the U.S. economy growing faster than any of its peers in the wake of the COVID-19 crash, Trump won a large majority of the 68 percent of voters who rated the economy as not good or poor, and an even larger majority of the 47 percent who said they were better off in November 2020.