Stop Whining About High Prices! Haven’t You Heard? The Economy IS BOOMING!

It looks a little bit ironic and almost undermines their credibility when mainstream media excitedly announce that we averted the recession and the economy is doing great and then, almost in the same sentence, they add “And this should help Joe Biden” win the election!  

If they could at least be a little more discreet about it, they might get more credibility! 

Mainstream media are trying to convince us all that because we supposedly averted the recession, GDP is growing, unemployment is low and democrats created more government jobs, we should feel good about the economy. However, the “good news” mainstream media spreads trying to help the president can not make us feel better because we are facing high prices anywhere we go – high gas prices, high food prices, high product prices, high prices at restaurants (even fast food restaurants), high home prices, high lease prices.  Our income has increased because due to labor shortages, employers were forced to raise our salaries, but just enough to keep up with inflation: On top of it since employers pay us more, they … increased prices for products and services and passed higher costs of labor to consumers (to us ! ).  Out of sheer sense of goodwill and solidarity with government workers presumably taking good care of us, we could be very happy for those government officials whose jobs democrats created with the Inflation Reduction Act or Infrastructure legislation – but this in no way translated into a better standard of living for us!   How is GDP growth going to help us pay less at the gas pump? Or buy a more affordable house? How is the absence of the fancy term “recession” bringing down loan interest to help me pay my loans? Maybe they will bring it down a bit, but not to pre-pandemic levels!  

They also like to talk about consumer confidence growing and seemingly continuing shopping spree by us consumers. Well, we need to eat whether we are in a recession or not, and food prices are high, so through their rosy glasses it looks like we are eating more, but in fact we are just spending more on the same food we ate before!  We don’t buy houses nearly as much as we did before the Fed raised interest rates from rock bottom interest – the housing market is stalled – no one wants to sell to avoid paying high interest with a new mortgage upon buying a replacement property, and no one wants to buy to avoid getting slammed with that high interest seeking new mortgage!  Car leases became a lot more expensive than 4 years ago; gas prices never returned to pandemic-level prices. Young people can not afford to buy homes; The construction industry is struggling and banks are as tight as can be with business loans which hurts start-up businesses and small businesses in general. In reality, there isn’t much good news that affects the daily lives of Americans.

Biden administration actually did have an opportunity to improve the economy early in 2021 and by now the economy would have actually been in much better shape with low prices and booming industries and many of us would have felt very enthusiastic about giving Biden another 4 years. 

All that the Biden administration had to do was…. Do nothing! If it didn’t print a trillion dollars causing inflation, if it didn’t support eviction moratoriums, if it didn’t pass any legislation that required more government spending, there would not have been any inflation, there would have been no labor shortages and businesses would thrive without IRS strangling them with additional resources IRS got through the Inflation Reduction act.

When shutdowns ended, businesses started opening up and needed workers desperately, but employees got free money (a trillion dollars) AND did not have to pay rent so many stayed home instead of going back to their jobs thus creating labor shortages. Other opportunistic ones took advantage of labor shortages and launched a series of strikes that forced companies to pay higher wages and provide benefit packages that resulted in HIGHER PRICES for goods and services: obviously, employer companies had to pass on higher labor costs to CONSUMERS! 

If the Biden administration hadn’t pushed for a “Rescue package” and didn’t give any COVID money to the employees while allowing landlords to evict them for non-payment of rent, those opportunistic employees would have begged their employers to take them back at the pre-pandemic or even lower salary rate!

This way there would not have been any labor shortages or price increases that caused inflation based on unhealthy COVID money-shopping sprees by people who didn’t have to work or pay rent but had extra money in their pockets

Without inflation, there would not be a need to raise interest rates home buying would continue at a normal pace, and the construction industry would continue to thrive.

The idea of Bidenomics, supposedly building up the economy from the bottom up simply doesn’t work and can not work. If consumers have too much money on their hands they just go on an irresponsible shopping spree accumulating huge credit card debt and they refuse to work hard.  Increasing wages, and expanding labor rights and benefits only leads to higher labor costs, and higher prices of goods and services for the same very consumers who are supposedly making more money, and salaries will always be falling behind price increases even with inflation adjustments because businesses need to make a profit to prosper – just surviving is not enough! Struggle against income inequality and this idea of “social justice” by redistribution of income is only a euphemism for legalized robbery – the government robbing the rich to “help” the “poor” without making the “poor” self-sufficient! 

True capitalist economics works and works much better without any pursuit of “ social justice “: people are forced to be self-sufficient and work hard, and they earn money based on their talents, efforts, and work ethic, based on property ownership and business management skills. A merit-based society functions a lot better than a government-run “social justice” society even though in this capitalist merit-based society those who are lazy, or don’t own anything, or don’t have the intelligence or work ethic to succeed remain very unhappy. This unhappiness may fuel civil unrest, crime, and socialist revolutions so to prevent that from happening, capitalist merit-based society must have a “stick” to protect itself with a strong police state to suppress the socialists and at the same time provide access to opportunities to become self-sufficient for those who are falling behind and are unhappy.

Currently, everyone is unhappy: business owners and the middle class are unhappy because the government takes more money from them directly or indirectly and because the costs of doing business are much higher in part due to high labor costs, costs of materials, and stricter government regulation.  The low-income population is also unhappy because of high prices for goods and services and the end of COVID handouts and eviction moratoriums.

To stay in power, the establishment and the mainstream media it controls are interested in convincing the majority of voters that Bidenomics actually worked to improve their lives. However, it will be difficult for the average American facing high prices for goods and services and the inability to buy a home or lease or buy a car due to high interest to feel happy about the economy until prices for everything including gas prices, home prices, food prices etc start going down significantly. 

The problem for mainstream media is the more optimistic they sound, the more out of touch with reality they are, and the less credible they become in the eyes of many voters who see the increasing gap between the rosy picture mainstream media paint and the reality full of economic challenges.  It would have been more convincing if mainstream media provided a more objective assessment of what is going on with the economy explaining to the population how they will directly benefit from Bidenomics and when rather than just citing statistics about big tech stock market success, or creation of more government jobs or lower inflation with prices still rising but just not at the same crazy pace they rose in 2022 for example… If only mainstream media could afford to be honest they might gain more credibility.