Inflation Can’t Be Censored
And the voters don’t like what they’re hearing. A new Gallup poll
reports: “Americans’ confidence in the economy remains very low, and mentions of economic issues as the most important problem in the U.S. are at their highest point since 2016.” Moreover, when asked to specify the most important economic issue,
inflation topped the list. Not coincidentally, the survey found that Americans identified “the government/poor leadership” as the most important non-economic problem facing the country. This is an evil portent for the Democrats who must defend tiny congressional majorities in the midterms.
Politico elaborates:
The professionals who track American attitudes toward the economy say they can see the trouble coming. Angry voters slammed by higher prices and scarred by two years of fighting the pandemic are poised to punish Democrats in midterm elections, according to some of the leading experts in consumer sentiment and behavior. And with inflation persisting and Russia’s war on Ukraine stoking uncertainty, there are indications that public sentiment is getting worse, not better, posing a growing threat to Democrats’ already slim chances of holding onto Congress, they say.
Nor can they claim they weren’t warned. Most reputable economists predicted that the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” that the Democrats pushed through Congress
without a single GOP vote was likely to ignite inflation. Lawrence Summers, who served in the Clinton administration as Treasury Secretary and later as an economic advisor to former President Obama, predicted more than a year ago that the bill was
reckless: “I think this is the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years.… I think there is about a one-third chance that inflation will significantly accelerate over the next several years.”
When Summers’ prediction proved accurate, President Biden and his accomplices added insult to injury by claiming that inflation was unrelated to the huge stimulus bill. First, they
insisted the inflation spike was temporary. When that was shown to be nonsense, the White House
said it was a “high class problem.” After the resultant laughter ended, they
exhumed the “corporate greed” canard. In response to the eye rolling that claim produced, our president
introduced the “Putin price hike,” and no one is
buying that either. Meanwhile, FOX Business
reports that inflation has erased any recent wage increases workers have received:
The Labor Department reported on Tuesday that average hourly earnings for all employees actually declined 2.7% in March from the same month a year ago when factoring in the impact of rising consumer prices. On a monthly basis, average hourly earnings tumbled by 0.8% in March, when factoring in the 1.2% inflation spike. By that measure, the typical U.S. worker is actually worse off today than they were a year ago, even though nominal wages are rising at the fastest pace in years. That’s because inflation is also surging.
