Biden, the Democrats, and the media fail to see that most voters are obviously worse off than they were in January of 2021…
President Biden and the corporate media are growing increasingly frustrated by the failure of Americans to accept their assurances that the economy is in good shape. They insist that there is an inexplicable disconnect between the public’s gloomy perception of the economy and the sunny state of affairs described by official government statistics. A vocal proponent of this view is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. As recently as Friday, he declared himself unable to understand pervasive pessimism about the economy and dismissed the phenomenon as a “vibecession.” Sorry, no sale. Krugman is a Nobel laureate in economics who knows this is nonsense.
When Americans go to the grocery store, they don’t think about the unemployment rate, the stock market, or the moronic COVID shutdowns.
Indeed, he proves it by invoking the Federal Reserve’s Economic Well-Being survey, which he describes as the “gold standard for assessing economic perceptions.” Yet Krugman neglects to mention this passage from its first paragraph: “Despite the moderating pace of inflation, many adults continued to indicate that higher prices were a challenge in managing their finances.” This is due to the cumulative effect of inflation. As Yahoo Finance reports, “Prices as measured by the seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index (CPI) are now up over 19.4% in the three-plus years since Biden took office.” Ironically, as The American Spectator’s Seth Forman pointed out in his March 25 newsletter, this understates the problem:
Now we find out — from former Clinton/Obama/Democrat economic advisor Larry Summers no less — that the government is also lowballing its inflation numbers, as measured by its Consumer Price Index … Using something resembling the old way of calculating inflation, Summers et al. find headline CPI would have peaked at 18 percent in November 2022 (not 8.6 percent). This alternative inflation measure would have stood at 8 percent in November 2023, the last month studied in the report. The fake CPI in November of last year was 3.1 percent.
The full report does not inspire confidence in the Biden administration’s inflation policies. Nor does the President’s prevarications concerning the inflation rate he inherited from Trump. At least twice this month he has looked the nation in the eye and insisted that inflation was at 9 percent when he took office. The Associated Press fact checked this bizarre claim: “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Inflation was at 1.4% in 2021 as Biden assumed the presidency.” When Fox’s Neil Cavuto confronted Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein about Biden’s claim, Bernstein compounded the lie: “He’s making the point that the factors that caused inflation to climb to 9 percent were in place when he took office……
