Biden stills shows no grip on inflation

 Jay Cost:

Joe Biden is a man beset with problems on all sides. His domestic agenda has stalled in Congress and is unlikely to be restarted any time soon. His foreign policy has been a disaster. Afghanistan has collapsed, Russia looks set to acquire portions of Ukraine, and China is making noises about possessing Taiwan. And, of course, the coronavirus still rages. It was irresponsible and foolish of President Biden to promise as a candidate that he would “shut down” the virus — how does one shut down a highly communicable disease? — but promise he did, and he has caught the blame.

But of all the problems plaguing his White House, the most dangerous is inflation. If unchecked, it could destroy his party’s prospects in the November midterm elections and perhaps beyond.

The recent reading of the consumer price index indicated that the annual inflation level of 7% is higher than any on record in 40 years. Forty years is an important number, for it means that the overwhelming majority of Americans have never experienced inflation at these levels in their adult lifetimes. The youngest voters in 1982 would be 58 today, meaning that those at their peak earning during the “stagflation” of the late 1970s and early '80s would be about 80 years old. Most of us, in other words, have few personal memories of the phenomenon. This is why the study of history is so important, for it extends our knowledge of the past far beyond our own lifetimes and provides lessons on what to expect in the future.

And the lessons of history regarding inflation are clear: It can flare up unexpectedly, resist the efforts of policymakers to tame it, and in the worst cases not only undermine economic prosperity but degrade civil society itself.

...

If Biden has a program to tame inflation, I haven't seen it.  His press secretary appears to joke about it and Biden himself has appointed no task force to come up with a solution or deal with the drivers of inflation. 

See, also:

Biden's regulatory bender is crushing the US economy

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more