Tiny, you know better. The loss of spending power is wholly out of Biden’s control and has nothing to do with his current economic policy. Inflation was not caused by Biden, it was caused by the shit downs during the pandemic (nothing to do with Trump really either) mainly from our largest manufactures (China) along with rampant unemployment (this could be blamed partially on Trump) which caused further supply chain issues and an inability to ship or move goods.
The war in Ukraine was a kick in the gut for oil prices due to additional supply constrains. It gave OPEC more price leverage, which the used, and there was anticipation of greater demand, which didn’t really happen and led to windfall profits for oil and gas companies. So no gas prices are normalizing as well.
And inflation is falling while real wages are up which means we’ll (barring some further unforeseen problems) have positive spending power when the inflationary pressures normalize. As I stated before, Bidenomics and the Democrat policies worked. The republicans will have a hard time attacking those policies as well as making headways with claims they need to save the economy.
Originally Posted by 1blackman1
I've looked at the numbers Blackman. The USA was the only major economy where the inflation rate jumped up in the first half of 2021. This was largely because we were the only major economy that was still providing massive stimulus in 2021, far in excess of the output gap which Lusty Lad and Texas Contrarian have discussed here before. The stimulus provided by Biden's American Rescue Plan.
In fact, by the time inflation really kicked off in other countries, the Workingman had already lost about half of that 3.2% in purchasing power I described in the other post. That is, the price of goods and services as measured by the USA CPI increased by about 1.5% more than the increase in wages, BEFORE significantly higher inflation rates hit other developed countries, because of supply chain hang ups and the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
The bigger problem, related in no small part to Biden's American Rescue Plan, is the huge increase in our national debt since COVID started. Yeah, people needed help. But we went overboard. Trump, Biden and Democratic Congresses, moderated to some degree by Senate Republicans before 2021, ran the public debt up to 100% of GDP. The increase in the debt attributable to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was peanuts in comparison. And at least the corporate tax cuts associated with that made our companies competitive again and brought money corporations stashed overseas back to the USA.
This increase in the national debt is going to hurt us. Lusty Lad and Texas Contrarian have described why here in the past much better than I can.
In summary, Biden et al pumped a lot of money into the economy, and that's part of the reason why we're seeing what you noted in the OP. But what have we gotten in return? Public debt greater than 100% of GDP, and inflation higher than wages. That's a piss poor trade off.
OK, the rest of this post is a little off topic and kind of a gimme to WTF, if he reads it.
It would have been interesting if Hillary Clinton had been elected back in 2016. We might be better off. The national debt would almost certainly be lower as Congressional Republicans wouldn't have given her everything she wanted and vice versa. And the Republican Party would be stronger today. Trump's influence hurt the GOP in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections. Democrats wouldn't have controlled the Presidency, Senate and House in 2021 and 2022, and thus wouldn't have passed legislation for anywhere near the $5 trillion in additional unfunded spending that they did.
I don't think the vaccines would have gotten into peoples arms as quickly. And she wouldn't have lessened the regulatory burden on businesses like Trump did. But she might have worked with Ryan and McConnell to cut the corporate tax rate, down from what was the highest in the developed world. That was what Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich did with the capital gains tax, which like the 35% federal corporate rate, clearly was not in the best interest of the country.