The last time a democrat occupied the White House while the country was embroiled in a significant bout of inflation wasn’t a happy one, and if this current Regime isn’t haunted by that precedent, it isn’t paying attention. This from nationalreview.com.
Arguably, galloping inflation did more than anything else to unravel Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
Of course, we aren’t anywhere close to the late 1970s, when inflation hit double digits. But the latest numbers—with prices increasing 6.2 percent, the biggest annual increase in more than 30 years—should be a fire bell in the night for democrats.
Large-scale forces are at play in the rising prices. [Current democrat policy] has tended to make the problem worse rather than better, though, and the eroding buck is going to stop with [this current Regime] regardless.
For the longest time, the White House’s response to inflation concerns was to high-handedly dismiss them. The White House scoffed at economist Larry Summers when he warned earlier this year that fiscal stimulus on a World War II scale might “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.”
[Contrary to] Summers, White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein predicted in April that inflation would rise modestly for several months before fading back to a lower level.
Well, here we are, close to the end of the year, with inflation indeed at its highest level in a generation.
Bernstein called rising prices “transitory,” a word that has been used so frequently by inflation-doubters that it’s become parodic. John Maynard Keynes famously said, “In the long run we are all dead,” so in a similar spirit, it might be that everything is eventually transitory.
Rising prices are being driven by a global mismatch between demand and supply as the economy recovers from the pandemic while disruptions in production persist. At the same time, bottlenecks are disrupting the U.S. supply chain.
Inflation in the U.S. has been worse than elsewhere around the world, and the Regime’s agenda clearly wasn’t designed with an inflationary environment in mind.
With the country already awash in federal dollars from the spending bills that have gone out the door over the past 18 months, perhaps it isn’t a great idea to layer massive new spending on top.
With labor shortages and supply disruptions plaguing the economy, it might not be advantageous to continue to stoke demand with various payments and subsidies while discouraging supply, either by making it easier for people to stay out of the workforce or by raising taxes and tightening regulations.
The Regime is now redefining their infrastructure and Build Back Better proposals as anti-inflationary, though no one ever mentioned this when the bills were being conceived or sold over the past year.
[The Regime’s] best bet is that jawboning and pushing at the ports and other points along the supply chain can make a difference, while companies untangle the mess over time. In the meantime, the global energy crunch could resolve itself as supply catches up to demand.
Whether prices continue to outstrip wages might be the best metric for the scale of democrat congressional losses next year and the ultimate fate of this current illegitimate Regime.
However, democrat leadership currently seems to believe feigning disinterest and fabricating excuses for the rising prices will prevail. Likely they anticipate being seated in the dealer’s chair come November 2022 and consequently holding the cards.
Remember, he who holds the cards deals the cards. And he who deals the cards may more easily cheat. Hence they’re mouthing the Alfred E. Neuman line, ‘What, Me Worry?’
