Bidenflation and Shortage thread

[kalm]

Inflation not dead yet

If they really want to get it to 2%, gonna have to be some pain and so far it’s been relatively painless

Wouldn’t be surprised to see Powell say you know what, we can live with 3%

Getting it down from 3% to 2% is still like 33% more.. that will be tough

I agree. 3% may be the new norm.

[GannonFan]

A biased source, but still, the facts and numbers suggest that the ARP has proven to be a success and was not the sole, or maybe even predominant cause of inflation.

The economy is driven by the working class. Bail them out during an economic crisis (rather than our sometimes used socialism for the rich - capitalism for the poorly approach and you see record breaking economic recovery.

There was another key factor in deciding to err on the side of more support rather than less. If the initial bill fell short, the President could not count on Congress to offer more help. History taught that passing a second recovery bill would be tough, even with the President’s party in charge of Congress. But if the bill happened to be too large, and the economy began to overheat, the Federal Reserve had the capacity to tap the brakes by raising interest rates—which were near zero percent at the time.
The President proposed his package shortly before entering office, and deliberations with Congress resulted in his original plan passing largely unchanged. The final bill provided roughly $1.5 trillion in direct relief to individuals and state and local governments. (While the total cost of the ARP was closer to $1.9 trillion, the remaining funds went to COVID vaccine distribution, K-12 school reopening, and other important efforts apart from financial stabilization.) State and local governments received hundreds of billions of dollars to fill budget holes and avoid painful cuts to payrolls or to badly needed housing and nutrition programs. Working-class adults and their children each received $1,400 stabilization checks. The unemployed got $300 in enhanced weekly benefits, which bought them additional time and financial flexibility to find a good job as businesses reopened. An expanded child tax credit provided parents with young children with as much as $1,600 more per child. Billions of dollars for lower-income homeowners and renters helped keep people in their homes even as foreclosure and eviction moratoria expired.
The President’s decision to plan for uncertainty quickly proved prescient. Shortly after the ARP passed, serious economic headwinds emerged. Two separate COVID variants—Delta in the summer of 2021 and Omicron that winter—led to spikes in infection rates and deaths, deterred people from returning to work, and set back reopening efforts. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 disrupted global markets for oil, wheat, and other commodities, and intensified supply chain disruptions. Yet through it all, the ARP kept pushing America’s recovery forward, even as other leading economies sagged under the weight of these global events.
The benefits of the ARP can be seen in nearly every economic measure. Economic growth soared. Moody’s, an independent economic analysis firm, estimated that inflation-adjusted (or “real”) U.S. economic growth in 2021 without the ARP would have been 3 percent. Instead, real U.S. economic growth nearly doubled that estimate, reaching 5.7 percent—one of the strongest years on record. In fact, out of all the world’s leading economies, the United States is the only country to have returned to its pre-pandemic growth trend. From an American growth perspective, it is as if the pandemic-induced recession never happened.
The ARP sharply accelerated job growth as well. Before the ARP, the United States was on pace to recover the jobs lost in the pandemic by mid-2024. Instead, America hit that milestone in mid-2022—and has added four million more jobs in the year and a half since then. Moody’s found that of the nearly seven million jobs created in 2021, four million were attributable to the passage of the ARP.
More jobs brought a steeper decline in the unemployment rate. When the ARP passed in March 2021, 4.2 million people had been unemployed for roughly six months or more. By July 2022, it was less than 1.2 million people—nearly the same number of long-term unemployed as in the month before the pandemic struck. That rapid turnaround was a sharp contrast with the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, when it took eight years for the number of long-term unemployed to return to pre-crisis levels.
The drop in unemployment was also uniquely broad-based. Past recoveries had offered quick progress for white, well-educated workers but only sluggish progress for other groups. That was not the case with the post-ARP recovery: The unemployment rates for Black workers, Hispanic workers, and workers with disabilities all fell to the lowest levels on record—as did the gap between the Black and white unemployment rates. And the unemployment rate for workers with only high school degrees also dropped below 4 percent, near a record low.
Measures of financial distress markedly improved. Evictions—which typically shoot up during economic downturns—actually declined, even after moratoria on evictions expired. Individual bankruptcy filings dropped and ultimately settled at a lower level than before the pandemic began.
The financial stability that the ARP provided also helped support a burst of entrepreneurship. Most entrepreneurs start a new business with their own funds or funds from friends and family. During an economic downturn, people usually have less money to draw on to make this initial investment. During the Great Recession following the 2008 financial crisis, for example, new business applications declined for two straight years. But in 2021 and 2022, more Americans applied to start new businesses than over any two-year period on record. Once more, this upswing was broad-based, with business ownership rates for Black and Hispanic households shooting up sharply. By giving working-class people the financial wherewithal to take a risk and fund a new venture, the ARP helped lay the foundation for an unprecedented boom in entrepreneurship.
For ARP critics, the 2021 and 2022 surge in inflation was too steep a price to pay for all these extraordinary economic outcomes. That would be a questionable claim even if the ARP were solely responsible for the inflation America experienced during this recovery. But at most, the ARP played a partial role. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco—who acknowledge that their estimate is at the higher end of the range—assessed that the ARP, along with the trillions in additional fiscal support during the Trump Administration, contributed roughly 3 additional percentage points to inflation in 2021. Given that annual inflation peaked at more than 9 percent in June 2022, the United States still would have experienced historically high inflation in 2021 and 2022 even in the absence of the ARP.
The relevant counterfactual, therefore, is a world in which the ARP never passed and the United States had to contend with still-high inflation along with softer growth, higher unemployment, fewer small businesses, and lower wages than it has now. That is the scenario many other countries are currently experiencing. Each of them would happily trade places with us today, especially because the United States has been able to bring inflation back down near the Fed’s target without a sharp rise in unemployment.

https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/7 ... scue-plan/

Ugh. All of that assumes that we were in a similar economic downturn to previous economic downturns. But the pandemic wasn't that. The economy prior to the pandemic was not only fine, it was very good. All of the trends that that snippet wants to credit to the ARP were already present prior to the pandemic. Remember, all we did was to flip the switch to the economy to "off". We generally sat around for a couple of months (well, except for the rest of us that just kept going into work throughout the whole thing), and then we switched it back to "on" and we carried on. Again, there wasn't anything wrong with the economy prior to the pandemic that had to be fixed, we just had to go back to work. Which, once we did, things were really kicking off. The issue with the ARP is that everything was already positive and trending that way by the time we passed it, hence the overheating that we had been warned of prior to passing that bill and other spending.

And it's odd that you trumpet the working class and bailing them out, yet it's the working class (really most of us) that still have real wages lagging from where they were prior to the pandemic. So we tried to bail ourselves out of something we didn't need bailing out of in the first place, overheated the economy, spiked inflation, and even with inflation leveling off we're still left with the increase in prices that hasn't been offset enough by rise in wages. For someone who doesn't like capitalism, it's so strange that you would be a cheerleader for an event that benefitted the upper classes (those more heavily invested in the booming stock market and other investments related to the increase in GDP) than the average person. You've literally bent over backwards in this case to defend something that in other times you would be wholeheartedly against. I had no idea you were so wishy-washy on your core principles.

[kalm]

A biased source, but still, the facts and numbers suggest that the ARP has proven to be a success and was not the sole, or maybe even predominant cause of inflation.

The economy is driven by the working class. Bail them out during an economic crisis (rather than our sometimes used socialism for the rich - capitalism for the poorly approach and you see record breaking economic recovery.



https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/7 ... scue-plan/

Ugh. All of that assumes that we were in a similar economic downturn to previous economic downturns. But the pandemic wasn't that. The economy prior to the pandemic was not only fine, it was very good. All of the trends that that snippet wants to credit to the ARP were already present prior to the pandemic. Remember, all we did was to flip the switch to the economy to "off". We generally sat around for a couple of months (well, except for the rest of us that just kept going into work throughout the whole thing), and then we switched it back to "on" and we carried on. Again, there wasn't anything wrong with the economy prior to the pandemic that had to be fixed, we just had to go back to work. Which, once we did, things were really kicking off. The issue with the ARP is that everything was already positive and trending that way by the time we passed it, hence the overheating that we had been warned of prior to passing that bill and other spending.

And it's odd that you trumpet the working class and bailing them out, yet it's the working class (really most of us) that still have real wages lagging from where they were prior to the pandemic. So we tried to bail ourselves out of something we didn't need bailing out of in the first place, overheated the economy, spiked inflation, and even with inflation leveling off we're still left with the increase in prices that hasn't been offset enough by rise in wages. For someone who doesn't like capitalism, it's so strange that you would be a cheerleader for an event that benefitted the upper classes (those more heavily invested in the booming stock market and other investments related to the increase in GDP) than the average person. You've literally bent over backwards in this case to defend something that in other times you would be wholeheartedly against. I had no idea you were so wishy-washy on your core principles.

Correction. I think properly regulated capitalism that favors a strong middle class is the cat’s meow.

We’re essentially arguing supply side and whether Covid was a thing. Check the allusions made to how other countries are dealing with the economics and what their inflation numbers are like.

None of this is perfect. The author even acknowledges that. But it did have positive effects on wages, unemployment, housing, etc. And of course the financial firms benefitted. They always seem to.

Dont worry, Biden is a centrist and the former Senator from the state MBNA. Rest assured the status quo will get theirs.

[GannonFan]

Ugh. All of that assumes that we were in a similar economic downturn to previous economic downturns. But the pandemic wasn't that. The economy prior to the pandemic was not only fine, it was very good. All of the trends that that snippet wants to credit to the ARP were already present prior to the pandemic. Remember, all we did was to flip the switch to the economy to "off". We generally sat around for a couple of months (well, except for the rest of us that just kept going into work throughout the whole thing), and then we switched it back to "on" and we carried on. Again, there wasn't anything wrong with the economy prior to the pandemic that had to be fixed, we just had to go back to work. Which, once we did, things were really kicking off. The issue with the ARP is that everything was already positive and trending that way by the time we passed it, hence the overheating that we had been warned of prior to passing that bill and other spending.

And it's odd that you trumpet the working class and bailing them out, yet it's the working class (really most of us) that still have real wages lagging from where they were prior to the pandemic. So we tried to bail ourselves out of something we didn't need bailing out of in the first place, overheated the economy, spiked inflation, and even with inflation leveling off we're still left with the increase in prices that hasn't been offset enough by rise in wages. For someone who doesn't like capitalism, it's so strange that you would be a cheerleader for an event that benefitted the upper classes (those more heavily invested in the booming stock market and other investments related to the increase in GDP) than the average person. You've literally bent over backwards in this case to defend something that in other times you would be wholeheartedly against. I had no idea you were so wishy-washy on your core principles.

Correction. I think properly regulated capitalism that favors a strong middle class is the cat’s meow.

We’re essentially arguing supply side and whether Covid was a thing. Check the allusions made to how other countries are dealing with the economics and what their inflation numbers are like.

None of this is perfect. The author even acknowledges that. But it did have positive effects on wages, unemployment, housing, etc. And of course the financial firms benefitted. They always seem to.

Dont worry, Biden is a centrist and the former Senator from the state MBNA. Rest assured the status quo will get theirs.

I don't think I'm arguing supply side at all. What I'm arguing is that a massive and sudden increase in the money supply, without any corresponding action from the Fed, resulted in a massive spike in inflation. That inflation was much more than a transitory moment, and we're only just now starting to climb out of it, as measured by real earnings. Post Covid, in Q2 of 2021, weekly real earnings, using 1982-84 CPI Adjusted Dollars, were $409. That already took into account the hit to the economy from the shutdown from COVID (we peaked at $427 in Q2 2020). Despite of, and I argue that because of, this unprecedented printing of excess money that came with the initial Trump spending bill, and then massively outdone with Biden's spending spikes soon after, inflation tracked way ahead of wage growth, which is typical in inflationary periods, and real earnings dropped to $391 in Q2 of 2023. We've only just now have started to climb out of that as we're at $399 in Q4 2023, but that's still $11 under the post-Covid impact and $28 under where we were pre-Covid. And it's been 2+ years of droppings in real earnings so there's the lost opportunity there too. As for other countries, again, the US economy drives the boat when it comes to economic impact. What we do affects everyone else. We also have much more resiliency than other countries because of our size, our disparate impact on the world economy, and the diversity in our economy to quickly shift gears to more profitable opportunities. We should be doing better than other countries.

Inflation is pernicious, and the ones most impacted negatively by it are workers in an inflationary economy. Workers, on average, have been spinning their wheels for two years in an economy that was doing well long before we tried to experiment with MMT on a macro scale. We didn't have a positive effect on wages, you need to go back to 2019 to see a time when our buying power was the same, and that's 5 years ago. In an economy that has seen as much growth than ours has it's almost criminal that workers have been so cut out from the benefits of that growth. If you are arguing supply side or demand side, which again I'm not, this experiment in printing money at a massive scale and trying to prop up segments of the population failed miserably.

On average, as measured by real earnings, workers are worse off now than either pre-Covid or pre-spending boom. That's a failure.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881900Q

[BDKJMU]

A biased source, but still, the facts and numbers suggest that the ARP has proven to be a success and was not the sole, or maybe even predominant cause of inflation.

The economy is driven by the working class. Bail them out during an economic crisis (rather than our sometimes used socialism for the rich - capitalism for the poorly approach and you see record breaking economic recovery.

Not facts, but BS.

There was another key factor in deciding to err on the side of more support rather than less. If the initial bill fell short, the President could not count on Congress to offer more help. History taught that passing a second recovery bill would be tough, even with the President’s party in charge of Congress.

It wasn’t an initial bill. It was the 3rd major Covid bill. There wasn’t anything tough about passing a 2nd recovery bill. 2 major ones had already been passed. The 2nd one, under Trump, had just been passed a couple months before. That was dumb too, but Biden had to be ‘Hold my beer.’

The final bill provided roughly $1.5 trillion in direct relief to individuals and state and local governments. (While the total cost of the ARP was closer to $1.9 trillion, the remaining funds went to COVID vaccine distribution, K-12 school reopening, and other important efforts apart from financial stabilization.) State and local governments received hundreds of billions of dollars to fill budget holes and avoid painful cuts to payrolls or to badly needed housing and nutrition programs. Working-class adults and their children each received $1,400 stabilization checks. The unemployed got $300 in enhanced weekly benefits, which bought them additional time and financial flexibility to find a good job as businesses reopened. An expanded child tax credit provided parents with young children with as much as $1,600 more per child. Billions of dollars for lower-income homeowners and renters helped keep people in their homes even as foreclosure and eviction moratoria expired.

With all these bennies he mentions, he fails to mention these were on top of 2 previous rounds of bennies. In total, with stimulus checks alone, the avg family of 4 under the income threshold got 11.4k (3.2k per adult and 2.5k per child).
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/what- ... lus-checks

The ironic thing is, that entire 11.4k was eaten up by inflation in 2023 alone (to say nothing of inflation in 2021 amd 2022
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation- ... en-higher/
So govt stimulus checks contributed to inflation that negated the benefit of the stimulus after a couple years. In the 2-3 year long run, Americans would have been better off with inflation remining at 1-2% and no stimulus checks

Yes, unemployed got $300 in additional weekly benefits. He fails to mention that people got paid not to work with enhanced, extended benefits for up to 1 1/2 years, which contributed to labor shortages and higher labor costs, which contributed to more inflation.

He fails to mention people got to continue to stay in their homes for up to 1.5 years without having to pay rent and be evicted, which screwed over landlords (majority of whom are middle class).

The ARP sharply accelerated job growth as well. Before the ARP, the United States was on pace to recover the jobs lost in the pandemic by mid-2024. Instead, America hit that milestone in mid-2022—and has added four million more jobs in the year and a half since then. Moody’s found that of the nearly seven million jobs created in 2021, four million were attributable to the passage of the ARP.

This guy is full of BS. The SHTF in the US with Covid in March 2024. According to the BLS:
Full time Labor force Feb 2020 158.7 mllion
Full time Labor force Feb 2024 161.0 million
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-s ... oyment.htm
So that’s 2.3 million ‘new’ jobs created, not 4 million this idiot pulls out of his arse.

There was no 7 million new jobs created in 2021. Govt shutdowns during Covid caused 30 million or so jobs to go away. When the shutdowns ended and those jobs came back, those aren’t new or created jobs. At least he’s not repeated Biden’s lie of 15 million new jobs.

Also, Labor force participation rate has gone down according to BLS.
Feb 2020: 63.3%
Feb 2024: 62.5%
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-s ... n-rate.htm

[kalm]

A biased source, but still, the facts and numbers suggest that the ARP has proven to be a success and was not the sole, or maybe even predominant cause of inflation.

The economy is driven by the working class. Bail them out during an economic crisis (rather than our sometimes used socialism for the rich - capitalism for the poorly approach and you see record breaking economic recovery.

Not facts, but BS.

There was another key factor in deciding to err on the side of more support rather than less. If the initial bill fell short, the President could not count on Congress to offer more help. History taught that passing a second recovery bill would be tough, even with the President’s party in charge of Congress.

It wasn’t an initial bill. It was the 3rd major Covid bill. There wasn’t anything tough about passing a 2nd recovery bill. 2 major ones had already been passed. The 2nd one, under Trump, had just been passed a couple months before. That was dumb too, but Biden had to be ‘Hold my beer.’

The final bill provided roughly $1.5 trillion in direct relief to individuals and state and local governments. (While the total cost of the ARP was closer to $1.9 trillion, the remaining funds went to COVID vaccine distribution, K-12 school reopening, and other important efforts apart from financial stabilization.) State and local governments received hundreds of billions of dollars to fill budget holes and avoid painful cuts to payrolls or to badly needed housing and nutrition programs. Working-class adults and their children each received $1,400 stabilization checks. The unemployed got $300 in enhanced weekly benefits, which bought them additional time and financial flexibility to find a good job as businesses reopened. An expanded child tax credit provided parents with young children with as much as $1,600 more per child. Billions of dollars for lower-income homeowners and renters helped keep people in their homes even as foreclosure and eviction moratoria expired.

With all these bennies he mentions, he fails to mention these were on top of 2 previous rounds of bennies. In total, with stimulus checks alone, the avg family of 4 under the income threshold got 11.4k (3.2k per adult and 2.5k per child).
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/what- ... lus-checks

The ironic thing is, that entire 11.4k was eaten up by inflation in 2023 alone (to say nothing of inflation in 2021 amd 2022
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation- ... en-higher/
So govt stimulus checks contributed to inflation that negated the benefit of the stimulus after a couple years. In the 2-3 year long run, Americans would have been better off with inflation remining at 1-2% and no stimulus checks

Yes, unemployed got $300 in additional weekly benefits. He dails to mention that people got paid not to work with enhanced, extended benefits for up to 1 1/2 years, which contributed to labor shortages and higher labor costs, which contributed to more inflation.

He fails to mention people got to continue to stay in their homes for up to 1.5 years without having to pay rent and be evicted, which screwed over landlords (majority of whom are middle class).

The ARP sharply accelerated job growth as well. Before the ARP, the United States was on pace to recover the jobs lost in the pandemic by mid-2024. Instead, America hit that milestone in mid-2022—and has added four million more jobs in the year and a half since then. Moody’s found that of the nearly seven million jobs created in 2021, four million were attributable to the passage of the ARP.

This guy is full of BS. The SHTF in the US with Covid in March 2024. According to the BLS:
Full time Labor force Feb 2020 158.7 mllion
Full time Labor force Feb 2024 161.0 million
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-s ... oyment.htm
So that’s 1.3 million ‘new’ jobs created, not 4 million this idiot pulls out of his arse.

There was no 7 million new jobs created in 2021. Govt shutdowns during Covid caused 30 million or so jobs to go away. When the shutdowns ended and those jobs came back, those aren’t new or created jobs. At least he’s not repeated Biden’s lie of 15 million new jobs.

Also, Labor force participation rate has gone down according to BLS.
Feb 2020: 63.3%
Feb 2024: 62.5%
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-s ... n-rate.htm

I see you’re attending the Gannon School of Flooding the Zone With Talking Points.

It seems like the denial stems from a failure to recognize that Covid was/is a very real long term threat that changed the world in many ways. That’s exactly why the Fed was created. To avert financial collapse through crises.

Again, I’m not a Fed fan either and who likes inflation? But by measuring economic performance compared to other countries currently and where we were just a few short years ago, it’s easy to see things could be far worse right now. Similarly it’s going be pretty damn tough to return to the Trump/pre-covid economy even if some want to. (There were underlying issues then as well).

[BDKJMU]

Ugh. All of that assumes that we were in a similar economic downturn to previous economic downturns. But the pandemic wasn't that. The economy prior to the pandemic was not only fine, it was very good. All of the trends that that snippet wants to credit to the ARP were already present prior to the pandemic. Remember, all we did was to flip the switch to the economy to "off". We generally sat around for a couple of months (well, except for the rest of us that just kept going into work throughout the whole thing), and then we switched it back to "on" and we carried on. Again, there wasn't anything wrong with the economy prior to the pandemic that had to be fixed, we just had to go back to work. Which, once we did, things were really kicking off. The issue with the ARP is that everything was already positive and trending that way by the time we passed it, hence the overheating that we had been warned of prior to passing that bill and other spending.

And it's odd that you trumpet the working class and bailing them out, yet it's the working class (really most of us) that still have real wages lagging from where they were prior to the pandemic. So we tried to bail ourselves out of something we didn't need bailing out of in the first place, overheated the economy, spiked inflation, and even with inflation leveling off we're still left with the increase in prices that hasn't been offset enough by rise in wages. For someone who doesn't like capitalism, it's so strange that you would be a cheerleader for an event that benefitted the upper classes (those more heavily invested in the booming stock market and other investments related to the increase in GDP) than the average person. You've literally bent over backwards in this case to defend something that in other times you would be wholeheartedly against. I had no idea you were so wishy-washy on your core principles.

Correction. I think properly regulated capitalism that favors a strong middle class is the cat’s meow.

We’re essentially arguing supply side and whether Covid was a thing. Check the allusions made to how other countries are dealing with the economics and what their inflation numbers are like.

None of this is perfect. The author even acknowledges that. But it did have positive effects on wages, unemployment, housing, etc. And of course the financial firms benefitted. They always seem to.

Dont worry, Biden is a centrist and the former Senator from the state MBNA. Rest assured the status quo will get theirs.

It didn’t have a positive effect on wages. Inflation adjusted wages are DOWN 2021 through 2023. Why are they down? Because of inflation, caused by the govt, which the ARP was a mjor driver of, which you cheerlead.
January over January
2021 Wages 5.1%/Inflation 7.5%
2022 Wages 6.1%/Inflation 6.4%
2023 Wages 5.0.%/Inflation 3.1%
Total Compounded: Wages 17.1%/Inflation 17.9%
https://www.statista.com/statistics/135 ... lation-us/

[BDKJMU]

Not facts, but BS.


It wasn’t an initial bill. It was the 3rd major Covid bill. There wasn’t anything tough about passing a 2nd recovery bill. 2 major ones had already been passed. The 2nd one, under Trump, had just been passed a couple months before. That was dumb too, but Biden had to be ‘Hold my beer.’



With all these bennies he mentions, he fails to mention these were on top of 2 previous rounds of bennies. In total, with stimulus checks alone, the avg family of 4 under the income threshold got 11.4k (3.2k per adult and 2.5k per child).
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/what- ... lus-checks

The ironic thing is, that entire 11.4k was eaten up by inflation in 2023 alone (to say nothing of inflation in 2021 amd 2022
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation- ... en-higher/
So govt stimulus checks contributed to inflation that negated the benefit of the stimulus after a couple years. In the 2-3 year long run, Americans would have been better off with inflation remining at 1-2% and no stimulus checks

Yes, unemployed got $300 in additional weekly benefits. He dails to mention that people got paid not to work with enhanced, extended benefits for up to 1 1/2 years, which contributed to labor shortages and higher labor costs, which contributed to more inflation.

He fails to mention people got to continue to stay in their homes for up to 1.5 years without having to pay rent and be evicted, which screwed over landlords (majority of whom are middle class).


This guy is full of BS. The SHTF in the US with Covid in March 2024. According to the BLS:
Full time Labor force Feb 2020 158.7 mllion
Full time Labor force Feb 2024 161.0 million
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-s ... oyment.htm
So that’s 1.3 million ‘new’ jobs created, not 4 million this idiot pulls out of his arse.

There was no 7 million new jobs created in 2021. Govt shutdowns during Covid caused 30 million or so jobs to go away. When the shutdowns ended and those jobs came back, those aren’t new or created jobs. At least he’s not repeated Biden’s lie of 15 million new jobs.

Also, Labor force participation rate has gone down according to BLS.
Feb 2020: 63.3%
Feb 2024: 62.5%
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-s ... n-rate.htm

I see you’re attending the Gannon School of Flooding the Zone With Talking Points.

It seems like the denial stems from a failure to recognize that Covid was/is a very real long term threat that changed the world in many ways. That’s exactly why the Fed was created. To avert financial collapse through crises.

Again, I’m not a Fed fan either and who likes inflation? But by measuring economic performance compared to other countries currently and where we were just a few short years ago, it’s easy to see things could be far worse right now. Similarly it’s going be pretty damn tough to return to the Trump/pre-covid economy even if some want to. (There were underlying issues then as well).

Translation: I presented facts supported by links on how the guy is wrong, amd you’ve got nothing but ad hominem..

[GannonFan]

Not facts, but BS.


It wasn’t an initial bill. It was the 3rd major Covid bill. There wasn’t anything tough about passing a 2nd recovery bill. 2 major ones had already been passed. The 2nd one, under Trump, had just been passed a couple months before. That was dumb too, but Biden had to be ‘Hold my beer.’



With all these bennies he mentions, he fails to mention these were on top of 2 previous rounds of bennies. In total, with stimulus checks alone, the avg family of 4 under the income threshold got 11.4k (3.2k per adult and 2.5k per child).
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/what- ... lus-checks

The ironic thing is, that entire 11.4k was eaten up by inflation in 2023 alone (to say nothing of inflation in 2021 amd 2022
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation- ... en-higher/
So govt stimulus checks contributed to inflation that negated the benefit of the stimulus after a couple years. In the 2-3 year long run, Americans would have been better off with inflation remining at 1-2% and no stimulus checks

Yes, unemployed got $300 in additional weekly benefits. He dails to mention that people got paid not to work with enhanced, extended benefits for up to 1 1/2 years, which contributed to labor shortages and higher labor costs, which contributed to more inflation.

He fails to mention people got to continue to stay in their homes for up to 1.5 years without having to pay rent and be evicted, which screwed over landlords (majority of whom are middle class).


This guy is full of BS. The SHTF in the US with Covid in March 2024. According to the BLS:
Full time Labor force Feb 2020 158.7 mllion
Full time Labor force Feb 2024 161.0 million
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-s ... oyment.htm
So that’s 1.3 million ‘new’ jobs created, not 4 million this idiot pulls out of his arse.

There was no 7 million new jobs created in 2021. Govt shutdowns during Covid caused 30 million or so jobs to go away. When the shutdowns ended and those jobs came back, those aren’t new or created jobs. At least he’s not repeated Biden’s lie of 15 million new jobs.

Also, Labor force participation rate has gone down according to BLS.
Feb 2020: 63.3%
Feb 2024: 62.5%
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-s ... n-rate.htm

I see you’re attending the Gannon School of Flooding the Zone With Talking Points.

It seems like the denial stems from a failure to recognize that Covid was/is a very real long term threat that changed the world in many ways. That’s exactly why the Fed was created. To avert financial collapse through crises.

Again, I’m not a Fed fan either and who likes inflation? But by measuring economic performance compared to other countries currently and where we were just a few short years ago, it’s easy to see things could be far worse right now. Similarly it’s going be pretty damn tough to return to the Trump/pre-covid economy even if some want to. (There were underlying issues then as well).

Geesh, I don't even agree with BDK much, but you brushing away actual facts and data so that you yourself can just rely on talking points is ironical absurdity. There is nothing about COVID that necessitated the two humungous spending bills Biden signed into existence in the first few months of his Presidency, especially considering that Trump had already gotten an unnecessary one passed less than a month before Biden even took office. And this isn't Monday morning quarterbacking, people were warning back then that the economy was already roaring back well before any of these spending bills got thrown into the mix.

Since you brought it up, what existed in the pre-covid economy that just can't be returned to in the current or future economy and is weighing down the economy today?

[Caribbean Hen]

This is why I don’t bother to provide links for Kalm

[BDKJMU]

One correction I made in my long reply:
‘Full time Labor force Feb 2020 158.7 mllion
Full time Labor force Feb 2024 161.0 million’

I wrongly said 1.3 million new jobs. That’s obviously 2.3 million. Premise remains the same.

[kalm]

I see you’re attending the Gannon School of Flooding the Zone With Talking Points.

It seems like the denial stems from a failure to recognize that Covid was/is a very real long term threat that changed the world in many ways. That’s exactly why the Fed was created. To avert financial collapse through crises.

Again, I’m not a Fed fan either and who likes inflation? But by measuring economic performance compared to other countries currently and where we were just a few short years ago, it’s easy to see things could be far worse right now. Similarly it’s going be pretty damn tough to return to the Trump/pre-covid economy even if some want to. (There were underlying issues then as well).

Geesh, I don't even agree with BDK much, but you brushing away actual facts and data so that you yourself can just rely on talking points is ironical absurdity. There is nothing about COVID that necessitated the two humungous spending bills Biden signed into existence in the first few months of his Presidency, especially considering that Trump had already gotten an unnecessary one passed less than a month before Biden even took office. And this isn't Monday morning quarterbacking, people were warning back then that the economy was already roaring back well before any of these spending bills got thrown into the mix.

Since you brought it up, what existed in the pre-covid economy that just can't be returned to in the current or future economy and is weighing down the economy today?

Like I said…’flooding the zone.’

That’s the fun part of economics. You can find numbers to support practically any theory and/or dispute any theory. I can play that game too and we can each credit and blame the policies to fit our own economic philosophies.

Your caveat of “just can’t be returned to” makes your question pointless as technically you can always make changes. So now we’re basing reality on the potential of IF we changed?

Ok.

From a macro view, Trump did little to reduce the long term inflation of essential industries like healthcare, and tuition. Those have been hanging around the neck of the working class for decades. Or what about the debt increase via Trump’s tax cuts? That doesn’t weigh down the economy? Everything was just magically positive under Trump with no long term consequences. Come to America, utilize our resources and economic strengths and pay little to nothing in taxes to support the system.

And what would have happened to these numbers and the greater economy without the ARP? It would have continued to “roar” back at the same clip and there would have been no inflation?

[GannonFan]

Geesh, I don't even agree with BDK much, but you brushing away actual facts and data so that you yourself can just rely on talking points is ironical absurdity. There is nothing about COVID that necessitated the two humungous spending bills Biden signed into existence in the first few months of his Presidency, especially considering that Trump had already gotten an unnecessary one passed less than a month before Biden even took office. And this isn't Monday morning quarterbacking, people were warning back then that the economy was already roaring back well before any of these spending bills got thrown into the mix.

Since you brought it up, what existed in the pre-covid economy that just can't be returned to in the current or future economy and is weighing down the economy today?

Like I said…’flooding the zone.’

That’s the fun part of economics. You can find numbers to support practically any theory and/or dispute any theory. I can play that game too and we can each credit and blame the policies to fit our own economic philosophies.

Your caveat of “just can’t be returned to” makes your question pointless as technically you can always make changes. So now we’re basing reality on the potential of IF we changed?

Ok.

From a macro view, Trump did little to reduce the long term inflation of essential industries like healthcare, and tuition. Those have been hanging around the neck of the working class for decades. Or what about the debt increase via Trump’s tax cuts? That doesn’t weigh down the economy? Everything was just magically positive under Trump with no long term consequences. Come to America, utilize our resources and economic strengths and pay little to nothing in taxes to support the system.

And what would have happened to these numbers and the greater economy without the ARP? It would have continued to “roar” back at the same clip and there would have been no inflation?

OMG, make it stop!!!!!!! We didn't have inflation at high levels during or after those things you mention. And I'm glad that you're only reaching back 5-10 years now rather than blaming the current bout of inflation on Reagan and the excesses of the 1980's.

Inflation is a far more immediate consequence of spending policies. The feedback from economic decisions that impact inflation is a pretty quick process relative to many other things. There's zero doubt that Trump's initial unnecessary COVID relief bill, followed on immediately by Biden's far larger and even more unnecessary spending binges, had significant impacts on the most recent bout of inflation and can be considered the major causes of it. There were issues with the economy that have been with us for quite some time, but inflation, especially the spike we saw in the 2 years following Biden's economic blunder, is easily tied to the increase in money supply that he intentionally brought on.

[kalm]

Like I said…’flooding the zone.’

That’s the fun part of economics. You can find numbers to support practically any theory and/or dispute any theory. I can play that game too and we can each credit and blame the policies to fit our own economic philosophies.

Your caveat of “just can’t be returned to” makes your question pointless as technically you can always make changes. So now we’re basing reality on the potential of IF we changed?

Ok.

From a macro view, Trump did little to reduce the long term inflation of essential industries like healthcare, and tuition. Those have been hanging around the neck of the working class for decades. Or what about the debt increase via Trump’s tax cuts? That doesn’t weigh down the economy? Everything was just magically positive under Trump with no long term consequences. Come to America, utilize our resources and economic strengths and pay little to nothing in taxes to support the system.

And what would have happened to these numbers and the greater economy without the ARP? It would have continued to “roar” back at the same clip and there would have been no inflation?

OMG, make it stop!!!!!!! We didn't have inflation at high levels during or after those things you mention. And I'm glad that you're only reaching back 5-10 years now rather than blaming the current bout of inflation on Reagan and the excesses of the 1980's.

Inflation is a far more immediate consequence of spending policies. The feedback from economic decisions that impact inflation is a pretty quick process relative to many other things. There's zero doubt that Trump's initial unnecessary COVID relief bill, followed on immediately by Biden's far larger and even more unnecessary spending binges, had significant impacts on the most recent bout of inflation and can be considered the major causes of it. There were issues with the economy that have been with us for quite some time, but inflation, especially the spike we saw in the 2 years following Biden's economic blunder, is easily tied to the increase in money supply that he intentionally brought on.

I’m ok with laying the blame predominantly on monetary policy. But there were other factors as well and temporary inflation that’s heading back to normal levels isn’t the entire economic story.

And thank you for recognizing the economic legacy of Reaganomics.

Spot on my man!

[Caribbean Hen]

OMG, make it stop!!!!!!! We didn't have inflation at high levels during or after those things you mention. And I'm glad that you're only reaching back 5-10 years now rather than blaming the current bout of inflation on Reagan and the excesses of the 1980's.

Inflation is a far more immediate consequence of spending policies. The feedback from economic decisions that impact inflation is a pretty quick process relative to many other things. There's zero doubt that Trump's initial unnecessary COVID relief bill, followed on immediately by Biden's far larger and even more unnecessary spending binges, had significant impacts on the most recent bout of inflation and can be considered the major causes of it. There were issues with the economy that have been with us for quite some time, but inflation, especially the spike we saw in the 2 years following Biden's economic blunder, is easily tied to the increase in money supply that he intentionally brought on.

I’m ok with laying the blame predominantly on monetary policy. But there were other factors as well and temporary inflation that’s heading back to normal levels isn’t the entire economic story.

And thank you for recognizing the economic legacy of Reaganomics.

Spot on my man!

Ah Finally … GF is better at interrogations for truth than I because you ignored being schooled by CH, educated in the streets, on this same point

but the word predominantly leaves you a little wiggle room

squarely on monetary policy is a better word

[Caribbean Hen]

OMG, make it stop!!!!!!! We didn't have inflation at high levels during or after those things you mention. And I'm glad that you're only reaching back 5-10 years now rather than blaming the current bout of inflation on Reagan and the excesses of the 1980's.

Inflation is a far more immediate consequence of spending policies. The feedback from economic decisions that impact inflation is a pretty quick process relative to many other things. There's zero doubt that Trump's initial unnecessary COVID relief bill, followed on immediately by Biden's far larger and even more unnecessary spending binges, had significant impacts on the most recent bout of inflation and can be considered the major causes of it. There were issues with the economy that have been with us for quite some time, but inflation, especially the spike we saw in the 2 years following Biden's economic blunder, is easily tied to the increase in money supply that he intentionally brought on.

I’m ok with laying the blame predominantly on monetary policy. But there were other factors as well and temporary inflation that’s heading back to normal levels isn’t the entire economic story.

And thank you for recognizing the economic legacy of Reaganomics.

Spot on my man!

Squarely

[kalm]

I’m ok with laying the blame predominantly on monetary policy. But there were other factors as well and temporary inflation that’s heading back to normal levels isn’t the entire economic story.

And thank you for recognizing the economic legacy of Reaganomics.

Spot on my man!

Ah Finally … GF is better at interrogations for truth than I because you ignored being schooled by CH, educated in the streets, on this same point

but the word predominantly leaves you a little wiggle room

squarely on monetary policy is a better word

GF also used to remind me that economics is a soft science and that figures lie and liars figure.

[Caribbean Hen]

Figures don’t lie but liars do figure

And Joey Rotten has not told us anything that’s actually true

[GannonFan]

Ah Finally … GF is better at interrogations for truth than I because you ignored being schooled by CH, educated in the streets, on this same point

but the word predominantly leaves you a little wiggle room

squarely on monetary policy is a better word

GF also used to remind me that economics is a soft science and that figures lie and liars figure.

Hence why you can even form that thought that butterflies flapping their wings back in 1986 caused the inflation we saw back in 2021, 35 years later, rather than the elephant standing in the room of some of the biggest government surges in spending we've ever seen to an economy that was already speeding up without them. I mean, it's not true in any shape or form, but you can float it out there.

[kalm]

GF also used to remind me that economics is a soft science and that figures lie and liars figure.

Hence why you can even form that thought that butterflies flapping their wings back in 1986 caused the inflation we saw back in 2021, 35 years later, rather than the elephant standing in the room of some of the biggest government surges in spending we've ever seen to an economy that was already speeding up without them. I mean, it's not true in any shape or form, but you can float it out there.

As I’ve said before. It’s not just Reagan’s policies at the time, including profligate spending. It was his ability as a pitchman and the neo-liberalism it has encouraged down through successive administrations, both Dem and GOP ever since.

[Caribbean Hen]

Hence why you can even form that thought that butterflies flapping their wings back in 1986 caused the inflation we saw back in 2021, 35 years later, rather than the elephant standing in the room of some of the biggest government surges in spending we've ever seen to an economy that was already speeding up without them. I mean, it's not true in any shape or form, but you can float it out there.

As I’ve said before. It’s not just Reagan’s policies at the time, including profligate spending. It was his ability as a pitchman and the neo-liberalism it has encouraged down through successive administrations, both Dem and GOP ever since.

Just think how lucky we would be if Ronald could come back to life and give our national evil clown Biden a talking too

[UNI88]

As I’ve said before. It’s not just Reagan’s policies at the time, including profligate spending. It was his ability as a pitchman and the neo-liberalism it has encouraged down through successive administrations, both Dem and GOP ever since.

Just think how lucky we would be if Ronald could come back to life and give our national evil clown Biden a talking too

Best President of my lifetime yet Ronald would be called a RINO in today's Republican Party.

[kalm]

Just think how lucky we would be if Ronald could come back to life and give our national evil clown Biden a talking too

Best President of my lifetime yet Ronald would be called a RINO in today's Republican Party.

Oh now you’ve done it!

[houndawg]

GF also used to remind me that economics is a soft science and that figures lie and liars figure.

Hence why you can even form that thought that butterflies flapping their wings back in 1986 caused the inflation we saw back in 2021, 35 years later, rather than the elephant standing in the room of some of the biggest government surges in spending we've ever seen to an economy that was already speeding up without them. I mean, it's not true in any shape or form, but you can float it out there.

Or the $8,000,000,000,000 growth in the deficit during the 4 years before 2021.

[houndawg]

GF also used to remind me that economics is a soft science and that figures lie and liars figure.

Hence why you can even form that thought that butterflies flapping their wings back in 1986 caused the inflation we saw back in 2021, 35 years later, rather than the elephant standing in the room of some of the biggest government surges in spending we've ever seen to an economy that was already speeding up without them. I mean, it's not true in any shape or form, but you can float it out there.

Don't go all in on your economist's opinion until you've heard from your astrologer.