Politics & Power Quote by Todd Tiahrt

“More than ever” and “higher than it has ever been” is the politician’s favorite kind of truth: technically legible, emotionally sweeping, and conveniently unbothered by measurement. Todd Tiahrt’s line is built like a victory lap, stacking superlatives to manufacture inevitability. It’s not just optimism; it’s inoculation. If employment is at an all-time high, dissent starts to sound like whining. If wages are “higher than ever,” calls for reform can be waved off as unnecessary or ungrateful.

The subtext is a quiet reframing of what counts as success. “More Americans working” leverages population growth and labor-force expansion, which can push raw employment totals upward even in mediocre economies. “Average wage” does similar work: averages can rise while many workers stagnate, especially if gains concentrate at the top or if the workforce composition shifts. The quote doesn’t mention inflation, cost of living, health-care costs, or hours worked - all the ways a paycheck can grow on paper while life gets tighter in practice. That omission is the point. It compresses a messy economy into a single upward arrow.

Contextually, this is classic incumbent-party rhetoric, the kind used to defend a governing agenda and claim stewardship over prosperity. The repetition of “in the history of our Nation” is pure stagecraft: it wraps contemporary policy fights in the grandeur of American progress. It’s less an economic report than a demand for credit.