Oh, for the best, it's like the worst, some preachin' pain, some die of thirst.

The way of knowing which way it's going, oh for the best, it's the worst.

Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast.

Today is Friday, March 10th, 2023. I'm John Pajor. It's the editor of Commentary with me as always executive editor Abe Greenwald.

Hi, John.

Washington Commentary columnist, an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Matthew Kuntneti. Hi, Matt.

Hi, John.

Christine Rosen is out today with us in her stead is Free Beacon Editor, Eleon Johnson. Hi, Eleon.

Hi, John. Thanks for having me.

I'm also co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, Inxtained Reaches, Available Every Friday Morning in your podcast inbox.

Lots of different things today. Very good job numbers. Second month in a row, which we've had.

Really good job numbers. There's a lot of surprise being expressed about good job numbers.

And then I was reading one of these stories this morning about how nobody expected that after the pandemic, there would be really good job numbers and things like that.

And then I was reading this and I was thinking, wait, that's not right. After the pandemic, everybody thought there was going to be an economic whom after the pandemic because there was so much pent up demand and pent up supply chain issues and all of that.

I don't know. I read these things and then I keep remembering that macroeconomics is horse patootie and that we should stop listening to everything.

All these analyses of this $24 trillion economy because nobody knows anything and they're all stupid and they come up with these theories and the common sense is like throwing out the window.

So I'm now in my neolithic. I'm stopping. I'm not listening to anybody anymore. Well, you know what's funny is there is this narrative that developed during the 2020 campaign propagated by Biden that the pandemic caused a huge economic crisis and a economic contraption on par with the great recession.

That was true for the first, I'd say quarter to first two quarters after the pandemic hit in March of 2020. But Biden inherited a growing economy and so much of his rationales for his massive spending as well.

We have to dig out of this big hole. We have to dig out of this big hole.

In fact, he clearly overspent and that helped generate the inflation. So a lot of this is kind of looking back and saying, oh, it was so terrible. It was so terrible.

And when it was for the first six months or so, but the American economy has come amazing capacity to recover and it was already recovering by the time Biden took office.

The other point I think on the jobs numbers, they were pretty impressive. I think the call was for about 255, 255,000 new jobs and it came. The number came in at 311,000. So significantly higher than what was being predicted.

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