The American Economy Suffers Under Bidenomics
Feedback from the American people on the economy is ringing loud and clear, but the Biden administration isn’t getting the hint. Inflation continues to dog the American people, and the current resident of the White House not only doesn’t acknowledge that, he doesn’t seem to understand it.
To hear President Biden tell it, the latest inflation data is proof that “Bidenomics” is working, the economy is humming along, and the middle class is doing well.
No part of that narrative is supported by the facts. The administration’s own data show the average American worker’s wages were effectively reduced over $4.50 an hour last month via the hidden tax of inflation.
The consumer price index for June showed prices rose 3% over the last year. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was 4.8%.
The Biden administration was quick to tout the 3% annual inflation rate as some kind of achievement. But that is damning with faint praise, since Mr. Biden previously ran inflation up to 40-year highs.
To put that in context, prices rose 1.4% over the entire year before Mr. Biden took office. Eighteen months later, prices were rising about that fast in a single month. Inflation remains more than twice what it was when Mr. Biden became president, and prices have already risen 16% during his term. This is devastating for the average American worker.
Inflation is the key problem. Inflation has spiked since the Biden administration took the wheel of the American economy, and it isn’t improving; and inflation, it’s important to note, is a de facto tax, and it hits hardest the ones who are least able to absorb the cost.
We don’t often think of inflation as a tax, but that’s what it is. Inflation transfers wealth from you to the government, and it’s hard to come up with a better definition of a tax than that.
Inflation enables unelected bureaucrats to finance trillions of dollars of spending without a single public hearing or vote from Congress.
For the average American worker, it’s about $9,100 a year in added taxes that most people don’t understand they’re paying. It doesn’t show up on your pay stub, and you won’t find any law that Congress passed or the president signed that levied this tax.
It sure shows up, though. It shows up at the gas pump and at the grocery store. It shows up when you buy materials and tools for a home improvement project. It shows up when you try to buy a house or rent an apartment. Prices of all those things are rising, and rising, and there doesn’t seem to be an end to it.
As recently as the Eighties, we had a pretty good lesson on what works with regard to economics and how to knock back inflation. What’s needed now is economic growth and reduced government spending, but the former is anathema to Democrats and honestly, neither party has done much of anything about the latter.
Joe Biden, of course, is bragging about his administration’s “success.” Now it’s tempting to say old Joe is dissembling here, but honestly, one has to wonder how much of this he even understands, given his ongoing and well-documented mental disintegration. Either way, of course, he’s a politician, a member of an occupation not known for honesty.
What will it take to get the Biden administration to admit that their policies aren’t working and change course? One suspects that nothing less than a complete meltdown of Weimar Republic proportions would do the trick, but given the administration’s capacity for spin, were a complete meltdown to happen, they would either point fingers at the Republicans or wave their hands and announce in an Officer Barbrady tone, “Move along, there’s nothing to see here.” They adhere to a failed economic policy as though it were their religion, and no amount of evidence will change their views.
The primary recourse we Americans have now is the ballot box. Can we count on the GOP to rein in spending and return to the economic policies of the Reagan era? The policies that gave us two decades of low interest rates, low inflation, and good economic growth? We already know what works. This, voters, is what the GOP should be running on:
Over the eight years of the Reagan Administration:
- 20 million new jobs were created
- Inflation dropped from 13.5% in 1980 to 4.1% by 1988
- Unemployment fell from 7.6% to 5.5%
- Net worth of families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 annually grew by 27%
- Real gross national product rose 26%
- The prime interest rate was slashed by more than half, from an unprecedented 21.5% in January 1981 to 10% in August 1988
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