The inflation President Biden said would not happen … happened. He then said it would be mild and short lived. It turned out to be neither. More recently he claims inflation is declining.
It is not. Actually, inflation is not back. It never left us.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the July figures in the form of the Consumer Price Index. The inflation rate across the board was 0.2 percent. That does not sound like much, but when looking at the impact over the past 12 months, you get a 3.2 percent rise. That us 50 percent higher than the top acceptable rate, according to the Federal Reserve. Putting aside all the partisan analyses and explanations from the so-called media experts, it means that prices are going up — including gas, food and housing. Gas has already surged to over $4.00 per gallon in many parts of the country. It is up 40 cents in the past three weeks at my local service station – to $3.85 a gallon.
Gas prices are important because they impact on us directly – and indirectly because they impact on the prices of everything we purchase.Inflation continues to outpace wage gains. That means the dollar buys less. You have less purchasing power. Some say inflation is like a tax on our income. Not really. When Uncle Sam takes our money, as taxes, we have an expectation of some benefit – dubious as it may be.
Inflation simply robs us of our wealth without any benefit.The latest numbers fly in the face of Biden’s claims about winning the war against inflation – and all that conjecture about a “soft landing.” It suggests that all those increases in the interest rate are not working as promised – and we may need another round or two. We also need to keep in mind that when Biden says he is reducing inflation – as in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act – he means reducing the RATE of month-to-month INCREASES.
Reducing the rate of inflation does not reduce prices. It keeps them moving up.
In a moment of candor, Biden admitted to a group of donors that the Inflation Reduction Act was not designed primarily to reduce inflation. It a spending bill to address climate change and healthcare. Or worse. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote:”I agree that the bill is misnamed. It probably would have been better called the West Virginia Special Perks Act, after all the goodies Joe Manchin stuffed into it for his home state, or the Elon Musk Additional Enrichment Act, given all the tax rebates for buying electric vehicles.
“The Wharton Business budget model and the Congressional Budget Office both determined that the Inflation Reduction Act will not actually reduce inflation. Biden has been consistently lying about inflation because it goes against his rose-colored glasses Bidenomics narrative. The title of that bill was a Bidn lie from the get-go.The July figures are not the worst inflationary increases the American consumer has experienced in recent years, but it IS an increase in the rate of inflation. It represents one more month that the fight against inflation has gone the wrong way. And one more time that Biden’s claims about inflation have been egregiously wrong.
So, there ‘tis.