WASHINGTON (AP) – When Joe Biden took the oath as the 46th president, he became not only the oldest newly inaugurated U.S. CEO in history, but also the oldest sitting president ever.
Biden was born on November 20, 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was 78 years, two months and one day old when he was sworn in on Wednesday. It is 78 days older than President Ronald Reagan was when he left office in 1989.
A look at the country Biden now leads has changed during his lifetime and how his presidency can reflect that.
LARGER, MORE MISCELLANEOUS PIE
The U.S. population is approaching 330 million people, dwarfing the 135 million at Biden’s birth, and nearly 60% larger than when he was first elected to the Senate in 1972. The world population in Biden’s lifetime has grown from about 2.3 billion to 7.8 billion.
More striking is the variety in Biden’s America. The descendant of Irish immigrants, Biden, was born during a period of relatively stagnant immigration following U.S. restrictions on new enrollment in the 1920s, followed by a global depression in the 1930s. But a wave of European immigration followed World War II, when Biden was young, and more recently an influx of Hispanics and non-white immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa changed the crucible again.
In 1950, the first census after Biden’s birth counted the country as 89% white. By 2020, the country was 60% non-Hispanic and 76% white, including Hispanic whites.
It is therefore no surprise that a politician who joined a male, almost total Senate as a 30-year-old, used his inaugural address 48 years later to promise a settlement of racial justice and signed several immigrants later in the afternoon do not have. -friendly executive commands.
COMMANDMENTS, HARRIS AND HISTORY
Biden particularly noted Vice President Kamala Harris as the first woman to be elected to national office, and the first black woman and South Asian woman to reach the Vice Presidency. “Do not tell me things can not change,” he said of Harris, who was a student at the still mostly secluded public elementary school in Oakland when Biden became a senator.
The first time Biden addresses a joint congressional hearing, there will be two women behind a president, another first: Harris and speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California. But change is coming slowly. Harris was only the second black woman ever in the Senate. When she resigned on Monday, the Senate left nothing behind – and only three black men out of the 100 seats. Black Americans account for about 13% of the population.
MONEY MATTERS
The minimum wage in 1942 was 30 cents per hour. According to the 1940 census, the last before Biden’s birth, the average income for men was $ 956, and women earned about 62 cents for every dollar a man earned. Today, the minimum wage is $ 7.25. The federal government’s recent weekly wage statistics reflect an average annual income of about $ 51,100 for full-time workers. But the demand is purchasing power, and it varies. The month Biden was born, a dozen eggs averaged 60 cents in U.S. cities – two hours minimum wage. A loaf of bread was 9 cents, about 20 minutes of work. Today, eggs can cost about $ 1.50 (12 minutes minimum wage); a loaf of bread averages $ 2 (16 minutes).
College teaching is a different story. The pre-war study at Harvard Business School was about $ 600 a year – about two-thirds of the average American employee’s annual wages. Currently, the current Harvard MBA class is charged annual tuition fees of more than $ 73,000 or a year and nearly five months of the average U.S. salary (and that is before tax).
Biden proposes raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour – a move that is already attracting opposition from Republicans. He called for tuition-free community and technical college for two years and tuition exemption for four-year public schools (hence not Harvard) for students from households with an annual income of $ 125,000 or less.
DEBT
National debt has risen in Biden’s lifetime, from $ 72 billion to $ 27 billion. But this is a recent phenomenon. Biden ends 36 years in the Senate and becomes vice president amid the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, when the debt amounted to about $ 10 trillion. Now he is taking office amid another economic disaster: the coronavirus pandemic.
To some extent, this is a biographical book for Biden. He was born when he borrowed to finance the war effort, yielding budget deficits that, measured as a percentage of the overall economy, were the largest in U.S. history until 2020, when emergency spending for COVID, the 2017 tax cuts and loss of revenue from a backward economy. trillions of debt added in one year.
Reflecting on how President Franklin Roosevelt approached the Great Depression and World War II, Biden is still calling for an additional $ 1.9 billion in immediate shortfall to prevent a long-term economic shift.
AIRCRAFT, TEARS AND CARS
As part of its proposed overhaul of the energy network, Biden wants to install 500,000 charging stations for electric vehicles by 2030. An analysis project could spur the sale of 25 million electric vehicles. In that context, federal statistics counted 33 million cars in total in 1948, when Biden started school.
A FIRST FOR THE SILENCE
Biden is part of the Silent Generation, so named because it falls between the “Greatest Generation” who endured the Depression and won World War II, and their children, the Baby Boomers, who made their mark through the comprehensive social and economic changes in the civil rights era, Vietnam and the Cold War.
True to the stereotypes, for decades Biden’s generation seemed to never see one of its own in the Oval Office. The largest generation produced John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Reagan and George HW Bush. Then Boomers took over the reins. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump were born in 1946 in a span of 67 days, the first of the Boomer years. Barack Obama, born in 1961, discussed their gender as a young Boomer.
If his inaugural speech is an indication, Biden seems eager to accept the characteristics of his flanking generations. He looks through the “waterfall crises” – a pandemic and economic downturn reminiscent of the Depression and the ensuing war effort, a reckoning of race that is an extension of the civil rights era – and calls on the nation ‘to the tasks of our time. ”
FULL FIRST-HAND LEARNING
Biden went through 14 presidencies before starting his own, nearly one-third of all presidents. No former White House resident has gone through so many administrations before taking office.