I think most folks realize that the American political class, especially at the Federal government level, is pretty inept at anything it does and what it oversees the Federal government do:
The Federal government has had over two hundred years to learn how to operate a profitable Postal System and yet our current Postal System loses billions of dollars a year.
Social Security has been around for about 90 years and our current set of Washington politicians are doing nothing to fix it as it hurtles towards insolvency.
Medicare has been around for about 50 years and our current set of Washington politicians are doing nothing to fix it as it hurtles towards insolvency.
The American taxpayer has probably spent hundreds of billions of dollars via the Department of Education since the Department was formed and yet American kids still get under-educated vs. kids in dozens of other countries.
These folks cannot even operate a simple National Do Not Call list, given the many unwanted calls I get every week offering me low mortgage rates, car insurance and many other unwanted services and products.
Yes, they are quite inept and incompetent. But probably their biggest and most dangerous failing is in economic and budgeting policy. They print money and spend money like candy and nothing ever gets accomplished or fixed, as witnessed by the list above. As a result, we have a $31 TRILLION Federal government national debt and yet our schools still under-educate, our national infrastructure of roads, bridges and dams are still falling apart, and major, important life sustaining programs like Social Security and Medicare are falling apart.
And the current administration seems clueless on how to fix any of these .problems and with the passage of its massive spending programs it has created inflationary price spirals that we have not seen in about 40 years:
When Trump left office and Biden took over, the annual inflation rate was about 2%.
By June, just a few months after Biden took office, the annual inflation rate was 5.4% but Biden said don’t worry, we have everything under control: “our experts believe, and the data shows, that most of the price increases we’ve seen were expected and expected to be temporary.”
By December, 2021, Biden’s “temporary price increases” had grown to 6.8% year over year.
At that time he admitted that inflation was a “real bump in the road” but that the economy and country had reached the “peak of the crisis.”
Unfortunately, he was wrong again, it was not a bump in the road and we had not reached the peak yet.
Prices continued to rise every month in 2022 hitting a 40 year high in June, 2022.
All of a sudden, having been proven wrong about inflation for a year, Biden decided to blame others for his ineptness and incompetence of his administration blaming the Ukrainian/Russian war, price gouging oil companies, etc., refusing to take responsibility for the outrageous Federal government spending, and borrowing, initiatives he forced through the Democratically control Congress.
But he really showed his economic ignorance, and I think this says it all for his stupidity, when he claimed that there was no inflation in the month of July, 2022: “I just want to say a number,: zero. Today, we received news that our economy had zero inflation in the month of July. Zero percent.”
However, inflation had been 8.5% in June and ANOTHER 8.5% in July.
Thus the rate of change in the inflation rate had been zero but the year over year inflation increases in July was still a soul crushing 8.5%.
Given that Biden cannot understand this very simple algebra concept, it is doubtful he has the intellectual ability to fix the problem he has created.
He tried to pawn off the horrid “Inflation Reduction Act” as a cure all for inflation but that legislation is just another wasteful spending and debt inducing boondoggle of the Washington political class.
The Wharton economic experts at the University of Pennsylvania ran their economic models and predicted that BEST CASE, this legislation would reduce inflation by .1%, basically rounding error.
Thus, you have a President that does not understand basic algebra and fractions, never mind economic theory and concepts, and a Congress that is passing legislation disguised as wasteful spending for their pet projects which will drive up the national debt while maybe reducing inflation by .1%.
And as a result of this incompetence in D.C., this is what Americans consumers are facing everyday when they go to the supermarket to feed their families [per the Wall Street Journal reporting, August year over year price changes for groceries during the Biden Presidency]:
Overall increase in grocery prices: 13.5%
Butter up 24.6%
Roasted coffee up 18.7%
Milk up 17%
Snacks up 16.7%
Chicken up 16.6%
Breakfast cereal up 16.4%
Bread up 16.2%
Rice and pasta up 15.7%
Cookies up 14.3%
Ice cream up 14%.
Seafood up 8.7%
Fruit up 8.3%
Vegetables up 7%
Pork up 6.8%
Beef and veal up 2.5%
So much for inflation under Biden being temporary, transitional, a bump in the road, etc. This is what happens when politicians operate anything: they muck it up, be it the Post Office , Social Security, Medicare, Do Not Call list, or economic and budgeting policy. We pay the price with higher and higher taxes, higher government debt, and higher food prices. And nothing ever gets better.
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