« Compromise is not in the Palestinian vocabulary | With Hunter Biden found guilty, expect Democrats to use that verdict against Trump »
June 11, 2024

A Slate writer gaslights about the allegedly great Biden economy

By Wolf Howling

Zachary Carter, writing for hard-left Slate, has issued his verdict on the economy: It’s great. Wholly contrary to popular belief, he assures us, “Inflation Is Not Destroying Joe Biden.” So why can’t the rest of America see it? ’Tis a mystery to be solved, and he buries us under “data” to make his point. Ultimately, his piece is a primal scream of horror that Americans insist on believing the realities of their wallets over the cherry-picked data in his analysis.

First, Carter first declares that inflation is a thing of the past. “According to the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, prices rose just 2.7 percent between April of 2023 and April of 2024.”

Image by AI.

The problem with the Fed is that its “core” inflation number excludes the cost of food, housing, and energy – the things that average Americans spend the vast majority of their income purchasing. When those numbers are added in, things change:

Jason De Sena Trennert of Strategas Research Partners constructed a Common Man Inflation index of items that people must buy regularly—food, energy, shelter, clothing, utilities and insurance. Nothing discretionary is included. In April, Common Man CPI grew at 3.8% year on year, higher than headline CPI for the ninth consecutive month. Common Man CPI so defined has topped headline inflation in 34 of the 40 months of the Biden administration to date.

Second, inflation is cumulative. Prices that rose with Biden’s double digit inflation are now baked into the cake and don’t decline merely because inflation slows month to month:

Third, Carter sees inflation in primary consumer goods as unimportant because other presidents, despite similar inflationary price rises, were seen as far better on the economy than Biden. For instance, he points to Ronald Reagan. Prices rose 17% during his first three years in office.

What Carter ignores about Reagan’s economy is that real wealth was expanding as the economy expanded. Thanks to economic expansion, tax cuts, and job growth, the net worth of families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 increased by 27%, far exceeding inflation. None of that is happening under Biden. Indeed, it is the opposite.

The WSJ recently compared the Trump and Biden presidencies on the stock market and household wealth to measure the economy’s health. The two administrations were roughly equal in market performance but they were as different as night and day when it came to household wealth.

Thus, with no adjustment for inflation, Biden has “overseen a 19 percent increase in total household net worth compared to the 23 percent growth experienced in the first three years of the Trump administration.” However, once you factor in inflation, though, all of Biden’s gains prove illusory:

After several other similarly misguided arguments, Carter finally settled on one possible cause of discontent: increased housing costs.

My best guess is that housing is a significant part of it. Housing has been unusually expensive since the pandemic due to two mass moving events—city people running to the country, then running back to the city.

However, it appears that Carter does not believe that either inflation or uncontrolled illegal immigration (which wreaks havoc with housing in minority communities) plays any role in housing costs. On that note, let’s conclude with the only person who has proven herself more clueless than Zachary Carter:

Wolf Howling is a pseudonym.

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com