Even as it exhibits towering contempt for the supposed constraints of the Constitution, and as it sneers at the deeper ethics of Natural Rights, the Biden administration appears eager to parade an astounding ignorance of economics.
Be it Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s March outburst that the world needs a standard, forced-on-all-nations corporate tax to avoid a “corporate tax race to the bottom” (to her, not a race of nation after nation taxing businesses to death, but a scary “race” to LOWER taxes because, in her eyes, one country decreasing the burden makes things “unfair” to the nations that DON’T LOWER THEIR TAXES), or be it President Joe Biden’s elitist implication that average Americans don’t understand the complexities of the supply chain (and only central-planners like him and Transportation Commissar Pete Buttigieg can grasp it and direct it), the "Bidenistas" long ago dismissed the fundamentals of economics..
And one of the most important examples of Biden’s economic ignorance and political conceit comes in the form of his administration’s response to the predicted, now obvious, price increases caused by inflation.
Wednesday, November 10, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released government admission of what many free-market economists have been saying for weeks – prices are skyrocketing, and the rate of the increases is higher than it has been in 31 years.
As Ryan McMaken writes for The Ludwig von Mises Institute:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday morning that prices rose 6.2 percent on a year-over-year basis in October. That’s the highest YOY rate since December 1990 when the CPI was also up 6.2 percent.
October’s rate was up from 5.3 percent in September, and remains part of a surge in the index since February 2021 when year-over-year growth was still muted at 1.6 percent.
Related: Media Crib Notes On Inflation From Jen Psaki - FAIL Economics
This happening as preliminary Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers reflect abysmal productivity growth, at only 2 percent, for the Third Quarter of 2021, millions of Americans have not reentered the labor force, and employment reports from the start of October reveal stunningly low numbers of new hires.
McMaken offers more important information about the upward price spiral:
Not surprisingly, producer prices surged in October as well. The producer price index for commodities in October was up 22.2 percent, year over year, reaching a 48-year high. We must go back to November 1974 to find a higher PPI increase—at 23.4 percent.
If you have the opportunity, please let a leftist friend know about this and offer some of the key reasons, which we will explore.
McMaken continues:
This is troubling information indeed, given that average real weekly earnings have turned negative this year, with inflation-adjusted earnings down 0.5 percent from September to October. It is increasingly clear that wages are not keeping up with rising prices for a great many Americans.
Indeed, as Jeff Cox observes, for CNBC:
(A)ll told, real average hourly earnings when accounting for inflation, actually decreased 0.5% for the month.
Of course, when most reporters use the word “inflation” they do a disservice to readers or viewers, because they're really discussing the price increases that have been caused by inflation.
Free-market economists often become frustrated by the fact that pop media reporters, such as Mr. Cox, mistake the RESULT of an inflated money supply with the inflation of the money supply.
Simply put, inflation is the artificial expansion of the money supply caused by a government controlling that money. The control can come in the form of a government “treasury,” a government-run bank, or in the form of a government-granted monopoly bank, such as the Federal Reserve, but the persistent problem of rising prices is a result of government claiming to tell us what money we can use in transactions, then making sure that more and more of that currency is created by the government or that government-created central bank.
As I wrote for MRCTV on October 24, when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki appeared to attribute rising prices to “more people buying things” in her attempt to bolster the fraudulent mirage of a “booming” Biden-economy:
This increase in the money supply leads to the higher prices that the politicians and media ignoramuses CALL inflation. Those more numerous units of money bid up prices, or, to offer the reciprocal, the increased money supply pushes DOWN the buying power of each unit of money chasing the goods. As a result, since the creation of the Federal reserve in 1913, the buying power of the US Dollar has been weakened by an average 2.5 percent, compounded, each year.
And, by the way, the inner-circle of favored interests in finance and politics who get the newly created cash first? They get to spend it before the prices are bid up by those down the economics train. By the time the cash gets to the people in the caboose, the pump is primed for higher prices, bid-up by the influx of monetary units given to the elites through the Federal Reserve and government spending programs.
Now, the kingpin of the elite in D.C., Joe Biden, wants to solve the inflation problem he and his profligate spending pals in both major parties going back decades have caused, and his answer?
Daily Wire’s Ben Zeisloft offers a good look at that coming disaster:
Biden pointed (Friday) to multiple solutions: diminishing COVID-19 levels by vaccinating children and enacting his controversial vaccine mandate for large employers, and passing his multitrillion-dollar “Build Back Better” agenda.
So, remember, the way to reduce prices is to impose unconstitutional mRNA jab mandates on business owners, workers, and consumers -- inspiring millions more to lose their jobs when they decide to hold onto their morals and resist the mandate – and to promulgate a massive porkulus scheme that WILL EXPAND government spending and increase the deluge of fake, useless, money.
As Zeisloft cogently notes, Biden told unquestioning reporters:
I want to say very clearly: If your number one issue is the cost of living, the number one priority should be seeing Congress pass these bills. Seventeen Nobel Prize winners in economics have said — spontaneously wrote to me, together, and said this will lower inflationary pressure on the economy when we pass my bills. A new analysis from the Wall Street firm of Moody’s Analytics found that it will ease the financial burden of inflation for middle-class families.
Because nothing says, “help increase standards of living, productivity, savings, re-investment, and employment” better than having the already debt-ridden carcass of the U.S. government belch out more useless cash to pay off constituency groups while it keeps bidding up prices in an ever-increasing hyper-inflationary spiral.
Add gasoline to the fire. That’ll really help.
Biden added:
Put another way: These will — these bills will provide families with, as my dad used to say, ‘just a little more breathing room.’ That’s because the Build Back Better framework lowers your bills for healthcare, childcare, prescription drugs, and preschool. And families get a tax cut. That’s how you end some of the anxiety people are feeling about the economy. That’s how we give people some breathing room.
The one-world-government “Build Back Better” schtick (with a price of $3.5 TRILLION) doesn’t hide the fact that Biden is tearing apart the U.S. economy. The rhetoric and plan provide no breathing room, but fill that room with fake, fiat currency that has no tie to anything of value. And Biden wants to do it even as his tax increase will put the U.S. top of the heap for highest tax rates in the developed world.
If you got to witness the nauseating spectacle of political hack, now Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm literally laugh about the Biden admin doing something to bring down fuel prices, see her say that the idea was “hilarious,” because, as she claimed, a “cartel” called OPEC controlled oil – after she and the Bidenistas ended construction of one pipeline and are contemplating ending another, and even as they halt oil leases in Alaska, you already have an idea of the monumental contempt these people have for you, the Constitution, greater freedom in general, and market economics.
Get ready, because if they continue to get their way, things are going to get much, much worse for your personal economy.