When political panic over the coronavirus resulted in hideous, wholly superfluous lockdowns back in March of 2020, not everyone suffered. As is well-known now, #richmanscoronavirus afforded the well-to-do a chance to relax a little, spend more time with kids who were similarly sidelined, read and cook, and basically do all manner of things that weren’t possible in the days before panic, and when work was conducted in offices.

In a recent editorial, The New York Times’ David Leonhardt opined that the economy performs better under Democratic presidents than under Republicans. Leonhart misses a lot of economic history, choosing instead to criticize Republican presidents, who, he writes, “often clung to theories that they want to believe — like the supposedly magical power of tax cuts and deregulation.”

The latest report from the Census Bureau on income and poverty shows that President Trump’s pro-growth economic agenda brought the pre-pandemic economy to soaring new heights. Not only did we see significant decreases in poverty, but median household income rose to a historic high in 2019 before states instituted sweeping lockdowns that put millions of people out of work and on to the government's payroll.