Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel laureate in economics, pointed out in a New York Times op-ed that economists have enough data in hand to declare that the U.S. economy is booming.

How much credit should the Biden administration get for job growth in 2021? The answer given by Krugman is "not all of it, certainly, but quite a lot".

First, the USD 1.9 trillion "American Rescue Plan" that Biden launched after taking office has greatly increased the purchasing power of American consumers, which is undoubtedly an important driver of growth. Even more important, however, has been the rapid rise in vaccination rates, which has led to a plunge in the infection and death rates. Krugman said he and some economists predicted long ago that the U.S. would experience a rapid, "V-shaped" recovery once the pandemic subsided and the economy could reopen; the success of the vaccination drive has brought the U.S. to that moment.

Next, while the vaccines themselves were developed before Biden took office, and the Trump administration had ordered millions of doses, the Biden administration took much stronger steps than its predecessor to coordinate vaccine distribution.

"Obviously things could still go wrong," Krugman warned. Vaccination rates have slowed down, in part because of resistance in "red states", and the large number of still-unvaccinated Americans makes a wave of new outbreaks possible. While Krugman sees the current inflation as a "transitory" problem, he would not rule out the possibility that things might go wrong.

In other words, short-run economic success is no guarantee of good long-term results. Many people have forgotten the widespread economic despair that prevailed just a few years after Reagan's triumph.

That said, right now the U.S. economic news is good, and the contributions of Joe Biden cannot be understated.