Biden Is Killing the Economy - Inflation Remains High and Consumer Spending Weakens
As President Joe Biden leads the federal government to higher and higher spending, consumer confidence is plummeting amid wave after wave of Bidenflation coming down on all our heads.
Despite the often unduly rosy reporting in the establishment media, the Biden economy continues to founder on the rocks of inflation that is bleeding Americans of their incomes and driving prices up across the board. And the pressures have caused Americans to seriously sour on the economy.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced Friday that the personal consumption expenditures price index — one of the inflation measures tracked by the Federal Reserve — increased 0.3 percent last month and 2.7 percent in the 12 months through April.
It was a disappointing result for economists and showed heavy pressure on consumers.
According to the U.S. Inflation Calculator, the inflation rate under Biden has been more than double every year what it was under former President Donald Trump. The president inherited an inflation rate of 1.4 percent when he took office in January 2021. By June 2022, it had soared to 9.1 percent.
While it has since fallen, it still was at 3.4 percent for the 12 months ending in April.
Reuters tried to soften the blow by saying that inflation rose “moderately” last month — as if it isn’t all that bad on us all.
The report conceded, however, that consumer spending is still weak under Bidenflation’s heavy onslaught.
“People have been pinched for a while, and it’s likely starting to show … This cooling is encouraging for slower inflation in the coming months,” Elizabeth Renter, a senior economist at NerdWallet, told Reuters.
Prices continued to rise with gas prices up by 1.2 percent and goods and services prices up 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively. Overall, food prices fell a little, but specific items are still rising.
“On an annual basis, services inflation is running at 3.9%, while goods inflation is nearly flat at 0.1 percent,” CNN reported Friday.
The liberal outlet acknowledged that “costs continued to rise too fast for consumers.”
Steven Ricchiuto, U.S. chief economist for Mizuho Securities USA, told CNN that inflation is “stuck.”
“The economy is declining, it’s slowing to trend from above-trend, but it’s still an environment where there’s an exceptionally tight labor market and coming back to trend from above-trend doesn’t make you feel all warm and fuzzy that inflation is going to go down quickly,” Ricchiuto said.
The result of all this is that more Americans are falling out of the middle class.
As Forbes reported last year, the U.S. aggregate income earned by the middle class shrank from 62 percent in 1970 to only 42 percent in 2023. And Pew Research found that the number of American households that are in the lower class increased from 27 percent to 30 percent between 1971 and 2023.
Meanwhile, federal spending continues to soar, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Worse, public debt is a serious problem and now stands at more than $34 trillion.
The U.S. Debt Clock is shocking, showing the debt rising by hundreds of thousands of dollars every few seconds. In fact, as Forbes noted, the U.S. has now passed $1 trillion in quarterly interest on the debt.
The upshot is that Americans are being priced out of nearly everything, from big-ticket items such as homes and cars to something as simple as a meal at a fast-food joint.
Nearly 80 percent of Americans who responded in a recent poll said that eating at a fast-food place is now a luxury, one they are increasingly unable to afford, KTLA-TV reported. Sixty-two percent said they were seriously cutting back on fast food because they can’t afford it any longer.
As to the big-ticket items, Market Watch reported that U.S. mortgage demand has tumbled.
“The market index fell 7.2% to 202.5 for the week ending January 26 from a week ago,” it said. “A year ago, the index stood at 233.0.”
And Kelly Blue Book found there is a glut of new cars sitting on dealership lots because people aren’t buying them. Worse, The Street reported that only about 22 percent of Americans can now even afford to buy a new car.
It is clear that the pressures on the American people are pushing them further and further behind, and that in the era of Biden, the American dream is far more of a forlorn hope than a reality.
One major way the president could help ease the pain is to put an end to the skyrocketing spending in Washington. Unfortunately, he seems unwilling to do even this much.
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