(MarketWatch) If your uncle corners you at Thanksgiving dinner and starts talking about how the U.S. economy is about to crash, what should you do?
If you’re feeling generous (as you should on Thanksgiving), you’ll politely change the subject. You won’t change his mind, nor he yours. You could talk about football, or flowers, or the hideous dress your niece is wearing. Anything but politics. Or economics, which is the same thing.
If you’re feeling a little pugnacious, you should tell him that the economy is on (more or less) the same trajectory it was on when President Donald Trump was inaugurated nearly three years ago, with decent growth in output, jobs, and incomes.
If you’re feeling generous (as you should on Thanksgiving), you’ll politely change the subject. You won’t change his mind, nor he yours.
The normal state of the economy is modest growth, which is what we’ve had. Trump deserves some credit and some blame for helping the economy to keep chugging along without transforming it as he promised he would.
It happens. Life is a process and the economy is a cycle. Presidents come and go. The political process isn't a factor for Wall Street and only vaguely impacts Main Street.
The world hasn't ended over the last three years and it hasn't turned into utopia either. Next year will be the same.
Common ground
But if you want to find some common ground with your entire family, why not take the opportunity to turn Thanksgiving dinner into a discussion of a topic that many Americans on all sides agree is a big problem: How the system is stacked against regular folk and how people can get ahead.
You could talk about how all of us work hard, but most of the bounty we produce ends up in the hands of a very few.
Talk about ambition and initiative. Imagine for a minute that you are standing at the head of the table, about to carve the turkey. Nineteen of your relatives are watching with hungry eyes and drooling lips as you slice down the breast bone and take half of the turkey and plop it on your plate.
That’s more than your fair share, according to our economic system. But what if nobody steps up to pick up the knife and fork? Nobody eats.
Food for thought.
