Real (inflation adjusted) median weekly earnings have fallen 4.2% since Biden took office. They increased by 11.2% during the Trump administration until just after COVID took hold, and 6.8% during the entirety of his administration.
This is from a Wall Street Journal editorial today on Janet Yellen,
We lack the space to cover all of Ms. Yellen’s whoppers, but a couple of them give you a flavor of her fantasy economy. Start with inflation, which she dismissed in three quick sentences, including a claim that “the causes of inflation are largely global.”
Well, sure, Russia’s Ukraine invasion has contributed to higher energy prices. But U.S. inflation had already hit 7.9% on an annual basis before the invasion began in February. It was climbing fast in the autumn of 2021 when the Administration was still calling price increases “transitory.”
U.S. inflation has been substantially home-grown. Trillions of dollars in federal spending hit an economy that was already recovering strongly from the pandemic with a tight labor market. This goosed demand while supply was constricted. The Federal Reserve kept the money spigots open for too long, in part to finance the borrowing needed for all of the spending.
Even conventional Keynesians like Larry Summers concede the inflationary role of excessive spending, and a new study for the Brookings Institution by economists who concede they were wrong about inflation points to supply-demand factors. Ms. Yellen credits the $1.9 trillion in the March 2021 American Rescue Plan for saving the economy without mentioning that it was the gasoline that fueled inflation.
Ms. Yellen is...at pains to stress how much fairer the economy is since Mr. Biden took office. “Prior to the pandemic, higher inequality was accompanied by slower growth,” she says. The opposite is true. Before the pandemic, inequality was falling as wages rose faster for low-income workers than they did for the affluent amid healthy growth.
She fails to mention that the U.S. economy contracted by about 1% of GDP in the first six months of this year, even as real wages were falling. Real average hourly earnings declined 3% over the 12 months through July, and average weekly earnings by 3.6%. They’ve fallen 4.2% since Mr. Biden took office. This has made inequality worse.
Inflation hurts the poor and middle class more than the rich because they pay a larger share of their income for the basics of food and energy. To put it another way, the average American has seen his living standard fall sharply under the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer policy mix of unprecedented spending, easy money, more regulation and higher taxes.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/janet-y...an-11662674409