People who only read the major press would be constantly bombarded with stories about how great the economy is. Headlines have said things like, “Look at the jobs market,” as if our current situation were the most stable in history. The full-court press has become so powerful that the Biden administration has even started calling it “Bidenomics,” which has not been a great way to sell the plan.
But what appears good on paper doesn’t always show what will happen in the real world. So, Joe Biden’s present economic downturn, which people are told they should be very happy about, is having a much bigger effect on American households than Paul Krugman’s most recent pick-and-choose bar graph shows.
Surprisingly, if you disregard how much items really cost across the board, you can paint a rosy image in which a much-delayed decrease of the rate of inflation actually represents a remarkable achievement. In the real world, though, this truth still stands.
However, starting on January 20, 2021, the day Biden assumed office, the total inflation rate was 2.749%. All of this adds up to a 21.151 percent rise in inflation since he took office as president.
The cumulative or compounded inflation rate—call it what you will—has exceeded 21 percent since Biden entered office. In other words, Americans now have to pay 21% more than they did two and a half years ago to live exactly the same way. It is difficult to articulate the extent of the systemic shock that many families have experienced. Even though it has been said that wages are going up, they haven’t kept up with basic inflation, and most people haven’t gotten a 21% raise in that time.
When favored numbers meet the cold, hard truth of real-world results, this is what happens. Because there aren’t enough people to do entry-level jobs, the majority of the wage growth has been at the lower end of the scale. But what does that mean for the normal middle-class dad who is trying to support his family? The answer is nothing at all.
The job market, which is said to be strong, is the same way. Again, there are a lot of entry-level jobs open because of a lack of workers which is mostly due to bad COVID policies. A lot of those jobs are held by people who work more than one job in order to make ends meet. Is that good news for the United States? Is that the goal we should have? I don’t think it is.
Author: Scott Dowdy
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