INFLATION IS RISING, OR IS IT FALLING?

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

Politicians love to spin reality into a self-serving interpretation. Inflation may be the number one topic in this year’s presidential election, and both Biden and Trump have contrived diametrically opposed stories. Both cannot be true at the same time, but this is the silly season. The key topic this year, as in most elections, is the economy.

Inflation is defined as too many dollars chasing too few goods, creating economic conditions whereby prices rise. There are a number of metrics for this but the most recent number being reported is 3.5% for March of 2024 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 04/10/24). The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the most used term for inflation, a measure of the change in the prices of basic goods, and what we worry about most is food and energy (e.g., gas). When Trump left office, the CPI was 1.9% (Investopedia, 04/30/24). Under Biden the CPI rose as high as 8.0% in 2022 (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 04/30/24).

So here’s the conundrum: the rate of inflation rose dramatically during Biden’s term but has since decreased. So far so good. But how do we word this? If inflation is currently increasing at a 3.5% rate, it is still going up. But it was rising at about 8.0%. So is it correct to state that inflation itself is coming down, or is it just going up less? It would be correct to say that the rate of inflation has come down since 2022 but it’s not factually correct to state that “today’s report shows inflation has fallen more than 60%…” (The White House, 04/10/24) inferring that the rate of inflation, and therefore prices, are coming down (thus things are getting better). Under Biden the price of consumer goods has constantly increased. To manipulate the wording to make it seem like the opposite is true, is to engage in the kind of political deception we see too often in today’s political environment. And Biden has said this many times, part of his Bidenomics mantra (a term he has recently dispensed with). Under Biden, consumer prices have increased by about 20% (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 04/30/24). This has crushed the middle class and the working poor, who are struggling to pay for food and gasoline for their vehicles.

This is reflected in the political polls, which show Biden has lost about 6% overall since he won in 2020[1], and its worse in 7 swing states[2] (Wikipedia n.d.; RealClearPolitics 04/30/24). He is on the defense in every swing state he won in 2020, and if the election were held today, he would lose most of them, and with them the election. Clever arguments about the economy, and treating the electorate as morons, will not win him a second term.

References:

Federal Reserve Bank. (04/30/22). Consumer Price Index 1913-. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913-

Investopedia. 04/30/22. Average Yearly Inflation Rate by President. https://www.investopedia.com/us-inflation-rate-by-president-8546447

RealClearPolitics. 04/30/24. RCP Poll Averages. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

The White House. 04/10/24. Statement from President Joe Biden on the March Consumer. Price Index. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/10/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-march-consumer-price-index-2/

US Bureau of Labor Statistics. 02/06/22. Consumer Price Index Summary. Consumer Price Index Summary – 2024 M03 Results (bls.gov)

US Bureau of Labor Statistics. 04/10/24. Consumer prices over 7.5 percent over year ended January 2022. Consumer prices up 7.5 percent over year ended January 2022: The Economics Daily: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov)

Wikipedia. (n.d.). 2020 United Staes presidential election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election#:~:text=Biden%20ultimately%20received%20the%20majority,Bush%20in%201992.

[1] Biden beat Trump 51.3% to 46.8% in 2020, a margin of 4.5%, but in the RCP average Trump currently leads Biden in a 5-way race (including the third party candidates) by 1.6%, showing a statistical shift of 6.1%.

[2] As of this report Trump leads Biden by more than the margin of error in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Georgia; Trump leads Biden in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania but within the margin of error. This is based on an average of recent polls.

THE DEMOCRATS RHETORICAL LOOPS

Ken Grossberger, PhD

In order to make excuses for their failed policies, the Democrats, and their Not-So-Mainstream- Media allies, have, either in coordination or due to some neurotic impulse to repeat their word or phrase for the day, routinely blurted out responses in reaction to criticism of their positions. Once that word or phrase is spoken by a leader, by the White House, or by some other lefty forum, the talking heads all start saying the same thing.

Remember the increases in energy costs due to Biden’s policy decisions? It was called the “Putin Price Hike.” And Biden’s deflection from the Democrats’ failures in Congress blaming the GOP? He said, “this is not your father’s Republican party.” And Biden’s flip on soaring inflation? He whispered, “Bidenomics is working.” And the multiple catchphrases repeated by his Homeland Security Secretary and others, “the immigration system is broken” and “the border is secure”, and not to forget “the border is closed.”

This constant repetition, with the presumptive force of rhetoric, perhaps satisfies the base, but further antagonizes the political right, and frankly puzzles the political center. Each of these lines is severely challenged by facts and believability. To whom are they speaking? They can only win their base once; the right and the center just aren’t buying into these. This not-so-subtle attempt at deflection is mawkishly transparent at best and ludicrous at worst.

Repeating nonsense doesn’t make it less nonsensical. Perhaps it satisfies having said it, perhaps it reassures when it is repeated, but it surely insults when measured against reality. The White House and the Democrats get stuck in these rhetorical loops because quite often they have no other answers.

The Big Dance

The art of lying is such a staple of politics that we accept it as a natural act, like the rising of the sun. Thus most national elected officials have dismal ratings in the polls: the President, Vice President, the leaders in the Senate (both parties) and the leaders in the House (both parties). Trust is a thing of the past and many of those who vote strain to choose the least damaging of the worst.

The Biden team is an example of such deceit, on steroids (as the President likes to phrase things). So he clearly thinks he conjured up the big rhetorical flip taking the Republican-manufactured sarcastic term “Bidenomics” and now uses it as a symbol for this miraculous economy he keeps touting. As his team cherry picks through the data for good stuff (“it’s working” Biden whispers) and ignores the bad stuff (e.g., huge spikes in the cost of just about everything and the dramatic increase in the national debt), he is performing the rhetorical choreography of the “the big dance” designed only to make his administration look good. So Bidenomics is better termed Bidenoptics. Every time he whips out his Bidenomics double talk, he is dancing. The border is closed, he knew nothing of Hunter’s business deals, etc. He continues to dance through the political tulips.

Even more embarrassing is White House Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s recent statement that the record setting sea of illegal immigration at the southern border in December is typical for the end of the year. Or “we need Congress to pass comprehensive immigration” as an excuse for the dramatic increases in border crossings under the Biden administration. These deflections are in line with today’s political word games, based on the dance, and not the truth. The American public is being waltzed down the proverbial road because the Biden team, like too many politicians, will continue to blame the person who put the cookie jar on the kitchen counter, not the person who put his hand in it. The same goes for the economic scene where Bidenomics has hit the middle class and working poor pretty hard. The White House excuse machine is not going to talk people out of their pain with some not-so-clever reverse sloganeering. Politicians have a political blind spot: all they have to do is get the right frame, the right explanation, the palatable clarification or the rhetorical justification, and no one will notice that what they say just isn’t true. They’re dancing, and we the people get a continuous show.

Is there a day of reckoning coming? Will the voting public finally reject the old school politics of deception and vote the rascals out? Are voters finally exhausted from the dance and looking to demand substance only? Lincoln might not fare well in today’s political environment, Franklin Roosevelt might. Reagan did. Carter didn’t. But those leaders were from different eras where there was at least a modicum of civility and restraint. Not that they didn’t have their own brand of shenanigans, or rhetorical sleight of hand. But nothing like the psychotic rearranging of reality of the Biden-Trump era.

Will this be the election cycle where voters dump the fibbers and elect the truth tellers? Perhaps the adults in the room will manifest themselves in such a way that this election will be more about self-interest and the needs of the county, and not power and cosmetics. But in the meantime time the big dance continues.

WHAT’S LEFT AFTER THE LEFT TAKES OVER? BIDENOMICS IS BIDENOPTICS

Joe Biden has bought into the lefty-woke political culture. Whether he actually believes this stuff or assumes it’s a means to power, we cannot tell. But he talks the talk even if the walk is a bit of a challenge. Whatever, he has positioned himself far to the left.

The right labeled the president’s failed economic policies “Bidenomics” a derogative term symbolic of high inflation and high prices. Using the Biden campaign’s spin to win technique they now use the term as a message that the president’s economic policies “are working” as Biden whispers not so authoritatively. Spinning is an age-old device in politics, a rhetorical sleight of hand intended to deceive the audience that reality can be rearranged to a more favorable appearance. So in his case Bidenomics is more properly Bidenoptics because the president seems more concerned with appearance than effective policy. But he still leans left as he presumes that the winning political winds come for that direction. Therein lies his problem.

The American political left continues to distance itself from traditional American values and what we used to consider the mainstream of American thought. This movement is now associated with Bidenomics, a slur converted into slogan in the president’s Bidenoptical way. Script flipping aside, Biden’s economic policies are pushing the country towards a progressive left reality that ranges from unworkable to downright ugly, where the rich get poorer, the poor get forgotten and the middle class gets trashed.

Biden’s government is spending $6 trillion more than previously appropriated, on top of an already dangerously bloated budget. This is money borrowed from the future as well as the present, and dramatically increases the debt curve to unsustainable levels where no American government has gone before. There are drunken teenagers with Dad’s credit card who have been more responsible. The interest on that debt grows unmanageably fast. It’s a runaway, and Biden does not even mention it. This leads us to the negative effects of the left, Biden’s current political home turf.

The left has no use for the individual, they are a collective seeking global collectivization. To them the world is a series of groups, but some groups deserve more equity than others (i.e. equity means privilege). The left is woke and woke is a problem. Woke thinking doesn’t work as a governmental construct, not even close. It’s philosophically corrupt and presumes that a theologically lefty oligarchy will tell us all what we can and can’t do, and how to think. If we dare to disagree, they call us names. There is no democracy in Woke-land as it’s a cruel Orwellian twist in yet another attempt by an ideological movement to gain power. “Racism” is the predictable reflexive, default rhetorical response to anything they don’t like. In their (possessive of “them”) homogenized society everybody gets put into a sociological blender so all might have “equity” (except for all the people “they” don’t like). The woke left fails to understand that they are not righting the wrongs of the past, they’re just creating new wrongs, in their reconstructed world of the newly privileged and the permanently condemned. Their version of our national anthem would end with “one nation under them with liberty and justice for some.” A lefty is someone who thinks the United States constitution is the product of white supremacy, and according to the left, individual rights are thus conditioned by circumstance. The result is mass injustice and the end of America as a major power and force for democracy. In the world of Lefty Wokies, who makes the decisions? Clearly not the people. What kind of society results from this thinking?

So Biden’s policies have damaged the economy, but he is somehow on an endless victory lap as viewed through the lens of Bidenoptics. This is not a question of glass half empty or half full, but emptying the glass as Biden doubles down on policies that got us here in the first place. He purports a perverse logic that a decrease in the rate of inflation is somehow a decrease in inflation, intentional duplicity at its worst. The results are and will be disastrous. If Biden is re-elected the US may well be a client state of Communist China within 5 years. And if the left is allowed to tax corporate America into oblivion who will produce anything? The Biden political brand is still on the market long after the expiration date.

What’s left after the left takes over?