At the most troubling level, Joe Biden believes what people tell him to say for the reason they tell him to say it. This reality underscores the reason why Barack Obama’s network selected Biden as their disposable front man in 2020. Biden sounds convinced, because Biden is convinced. He’s wrong, factually and fundamentally wrong, but he believes what he repeats in public.
The most painfully obvious examples of this dynamic are present when Joe Biden explains economic things based on what other people have told him. The guy really is the modern personification of the naked emperor parading around to show off an invisible coat that he genuinely believes he’s wearing. The self-deception would be embarrassing except for the fact he is only deceiving himself; so people laugh…. but this is dangerous.
Questioned today about inflation, Joe Biden starts talking about his Build Back Better program. It really is worth watching to see how oddly emphatic he is in the belief that if government pays for a thing (childcare, healthcare, prescriptions) the cost of that thing somehow mysteriously disappears.
Biden believes that if government subsidizes something there is no longer a cost associated with it. He believes this.
Setting aside the historic fact/truth that anything government pays or subsidizes ultimately costs more, the real cognitive dissonance in Biden’s worldview is that any cost associate with a ‘thing‘ disappears if the government pays for that ‘thing’. From that bizarre viewpoint, the disappearance of public expense for that government subsidized thing then creates “deflation”, or a lowering in overall prices.
This claim is abject nonsense. Truly and genuinely batshit crazy nonsense.
Example. According to Joe Biden’s talking point: if government pays for college education, the price of a college student’s car drops. It doesn’t. To make that claim is absurd in the extreme. The college student may have more money to pay for a car if they are not paying for tuition, but the car itself doesn’t change in price.
A person may have more money to pay for groceries if they are not paying for childcare expenses, but the price of the groceries doesn’t change. The inflation on the prices of products at the grocery store does not change just because some families no longer have daycare expenses. But Joe Biden believes it does.
Regarding the price of something once government starts subsidizing that something, consider this:
Notice the correlation between the affordability of something once the government starts subsidizing it?
Perhaps the worst part of Joe Biden’s policy implementation is his actual belief in it.
This is what happens when your entire life is centered in a bubble or echo-chamber of academics, politicians and think-tanks that have no connection whatsoever to Main Street and common sense. This is also why lobbyists are effective. Lobbyists can bullshit the gullible politicians into believing just about anything, because the people who are at the highest level of politics are genuinely clueless about Main Street.
We are so screwed….
….please prepare your affairs accordingly.