Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan made the case for Americans
to be thankful for one person in particular this year: Taylor Swift.

"She brings joy, jobs and happy feet everywhere she goes," Noonan wrote in
an op-ed headlined "We Should All Give Thanks for Taylor Swift."

"She’s the best thing happening in America," Noonan wrote.

"Everyone says she’s huge, she’s fabulous, but really it’s bigger than that,"
Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Reagan, wrote. "What she did
this year is some kind of epic American story."

"Miss Taylor Swift is the Person of the Year," she added, in reference to TIME's
yearly tradition.

"She is the best thing that has happened in America in all of 2023," she continued.
"This fact makes her a suitably international choice because when something
good happens in America, boy is it worldwide news."

Noonan argued that Swift record-breaking concert tours across the country have
not only solidified her reputation as an American pop icon, she is also a boon to
the economy.

"She has transformed the economy of every city she visits. The U.S. Travel
Association reported this fall that what her concertgoers spend in and around
each venue ‘is on par with the Super Bowl, but this time it happened on 53
different nights in 20 different locations over the course of five months.’ Downtowns
across the country—uniquely battered by the pandemic and the riots and
demonstrations of 2020—are, while she is there, brought to life, with an influx of
visitors and a local small business boom."

"Wherever she went it was like the past three years didn’t happen," Noonan wrote.

Before taking her show "Eras" worldwide, Swift famously gave her entire staff
millions of dollars in bonuses, Fox News Digital confirmed.

Noonan continued to rattle off Swift's remarkable effect on economies around the
country. "When Ms. Swift played Los Angeles for six sold-out nights in August she
brought a reported $320 million local windfall with her, including 3,300 jobs and a
$160 million increase in local earnings," she wrote. "From Straits Research this
month: Ms. Swift’s tour is ‘an economic phenomenon that is totally altering the rules
of entertainment economics.’"

It is an achievement that puts her in her "own category," Noonan wrote because
she doesn't just pump up the economy — she "bring joy."