Dystopia 2024: How Republicans' depiction of U.S. stacks up to the facts

It's a strikingly bleak picture of the United States being painted at the Republican convention: a dystopian portrait of a violent, impoverished, weakened nation.

The four-day gathering in Milwaukee, Wis., is one long prosecution of Joe Biden's presidency — of inflation, crime, unlawful migration and global instability all up, up, up, with the nation going down, down, down.

"They're destroying the American spirit," said convention speaker Sara Workman, who lost her husband to a drug overdose. "Everywhere we look there's pain, chaos and crisis."

The actual scorecard is more nuanced. 

On some fronts, the bleak messaging is either outdated or wrong: inflation is down, as is violent crime, while wages are up. In fact, wages are higher than under Donald Trump's presidency, even counting inflation. Homicides? Lower than in 2020.

The Republican narrative is correct on irregular migration stats. They're high. As is global instability and war-related violence, Wednesday's convention theme. 

Here's a close look at some of the data.

On Day 1 of the convention, an ad played on the overheard screen showing people suffering under the weight of high gas prices, high food prices and, generally, high inflation.

"Joe Biden's policies, Kamala [Harris]'s policies, they're killing us," said one man in the ad, fuming over high prices at the grocery store.

Republicans can, correctly, point to this: in the last few years, the U.S. had its highest inflation rate in four decades, and that rate was slightly higher than the G7 average post-2021.

In fact, the U.S. has had higher inflation than Canada in every year over this period, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund.

Over 25 punishing months, the cost of living grew faster than wages, leaving Americans poorer. But that trend reversed just over a year ago.

Here's what Republicans aren't saying: the economy has grown every year Biden has been president. It tracked behind the OECD average for the first part, but has since surpassed it.

For 12 straight months, wages have outstripped inflation. The U.S. inflation rate dropped below the G7 average last year; the overall rate is now three per cent, and some goods are now actually seeing prices fall backward.