Trump vs Harris

[∞∞∞]

Those prices don't mean anything without context, especially since salaries outpaced inflation post-2021. The pandemic was the culprit for big inflation in 2021, and that was a global problem. The US weathered the storm better than most countries and avoided a recession.

Btw I go to Lidl for groceries and looked up my local prices: $2.59 for a gallon of milk and $1.69 for a stick of butter. I don't buy cookies.

[GannonFan]

Those prices don't mean anything without context, especially since salaries outpaced inflation post-2021. The pandemic was the culprit for big inflation in 2021, and that was a global problem. The US weathered the storm better than most countries and avoided a recession.

Btw I go to Lidl for groceries and looked up my local prices: $2.59 for a gallon of milk and $1.69 for a stick of butter. I don't buy cookies.

The pandemic absolutely did not cause the inflation bump in 2021 and beyond. Inflation is always a money supply issue and the biggest culprit for that was the decision by the Biden administration to go all in on Modern Monetary Theory and flood the market with more government spending. $1.9 trillion added to the economy early in the Biden administration, purportedly as "COVID relief", to an economy that was already well on the road to recovery after the pandemic pause - GDP was up 34.8% in 3Q 2020, 4.2% 4Q 2020, and 5.4% in 1Q 2021 - real GDP was already back to pre-pandemic highs before Biden even spent a dime. As for salaries outpacing inflation since post 2021, that's a canard as well. The real issue is real wages, i.e. the buying power of money. We're still negative in terms of real wages over the Biden years - the reason why so many folks, especially the middle and lower class, feel economic pain still today is that they are able to afford less today than they did 4 years ago. The rich folks are doing great today, ironically, because the reckless increase in spending inflated their stock holdings. The gap between the well-off and everyone else in America has only grown in the past four years thanks to ill-advised over spending.

Harris may very well win in November, and considering that Trump is a loathsome lunatic I'm not going to shed any tears over that. But to pretend in any way that the economic policies of the Biden administration have been anything but disastrous is disingenuous and ignores the plain economic data that is right in front of us.

[houndawg]

Trump's dad was the doctor's landlord.

A doctor needed a landlord? This story is already off to a bad start.

Things were different efore your time, son.

[houndawg]

Putting this where it belongs ...


#8 is in conflict with the MAQA yahoo desire to not support Ukraine, NATO, possibly Taiwan, etc. Isolationism makes WWIII more likely not less.

Hmm, there was one POTUS in the last 4 where Russia didn’t invade anyone. Hmm, wonder who and why that was?

Its one thing to support Ukraine, and another to blank check them with no end in site. Of course the NEOCONS and the MIC loves it. No more endless foreign wars, and no more endless, blank check funding endless foreign wars.

much less costly to have POTUS unilateraly withdraw from NATO - and it has to be killing Putin to know how close he came to pulling off history's greatest political coup...

[houndawg]

Religious content is political content so yes #16 is also talking about religious content.

If religious content is political content as you claim then they are talking about ‘CUT FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ANY SCHOOL PUSHING… POLITICAL CONTENT’ therefore they are talking about cutting federal funding for any school pushing religious content. That isn’t pushing religion.

[houndawg]

Who do you think they're going to go after first? It will be easier to find illegal immigrants working in agriculture (or to scare them away from the farms/ranches) then it will be to find the ones in the blue cities. Ag workers will be the "low hanging fruit".

What about the impact of the tariffs?

trump's policies are full of MAQA yahoo wet dreams.

No actually it will be far easier to round up the ones massed in the blue city shelters & neighborhoods than spread out in small groups in rural areas around the country.

PLENTY of low hanging illegal fruit that isn’t ag. Heck, just a little over 1.1 million a year (out of upwards of 30 million) would be the largest deportation/voluntary return ever. Prior record was in 1954 under Eisenhower tabbed at under 1.1 million deportation/voluntary returns. That was with only about 1k Border Patrol agents.

Having a net outflow (deportations and voluntary returns) that exceeded inflow (gotaways, visa overstays) in a year would be ginormous progress and a realistic goal. Would have to be achieved at both ends. Drastically cutting inflow and increasing outflow. As far as the bogus asylees can fix that with a reinstating Remain In Mexico.

You don't know what you're talking about, BD. You clearly haven't spent much time out in America.


Farm workers are most definitely the low hanging fruit; those who demoize them are more than aware of what would happen to wages if anyone who matters took their demonizing seriously. You don't seriously think your Congress wants to be forced into paying their nannies and landscapers a living wage? Do you.. ?

[∞∞∞]

Those prices don't mean anything without context, especially since salaries outpaced inflation post-2021. The pandemic was the culprit for big inflation in 2021, and that was a global problem. The US weathered the storm better than most countries and avoided a recession.

Btw I go to Lidl for groceries and looked up my local prices: $2.59 for a gallon of milk and $1.69 for a stick of butter. I don't buy cookies.

The pandemic absolutely did not cause the inflation bump in 2021 and beyond. Inflation is always a money supply issue and the biggest culprit for that was the decision by the Biden administration to go all in on Modern Monetary Theory and flood the market with more government spending. $1.9 trillion added to the economy early in the Biden administration, purportedly as "COVID relief", to an economy that was already well on the road to recovery after the pandemic pause - GDP was up 34.8% in 3Q 2020, 4.2% 4Q 2020, and 5.4% in 1Q 2021 - real GDP was already back to pre-pandemic highs before Biden even spent a dime. As for salaries outpacing inflation since post 2021, that's a canard as well. The real issue is real wages, i.e. the buying power of money. We're still negative in terms of real wages over the Biden years - the reason why so many folks, especially the middle and lower class, feel economic pain still today is that they are able to afford less today than they did 4 years ago. The rich folks are doing great today, ironically, because the reckless increase in spending inflated their stock holdings. The gap between the well-off and everyone else in America has only grown in the past four years thanks to ill-advised over spending.

Harris may very well win in November, and considering that Trump is a loathsome lunatic I'm not going to shed any tears over that. But to pretend in any way that the economic policies of the Biden administration have been anything but disastrous is disingenuous and ignores the plain economic data that is right in front of us.

Maybe some economists buy this theory, but most certainly don't. You're completely ignoring the pandemic's effects:

- Lower energy production.
- Lock downs (especially in Asia) shutting down factories.
- Associated materials shortages (lumber, steel, etc.)
- Silicon chip shortages.
- Long delays at ports.
- Labor shortages in all industries, but especially leisure, travel, agricultural, and manufacturing.
- Suspended immigration (magnifying labor shortage).
- Re-shuffling of the workforce due to people being laid off and mass moving of people.
- Housing shortages and the associated price spikes (because everyone was moving and low interest).
- Loss of workforce numbers due to illness and death (further magnifying labor shortages).
- Increased healthcare costs and strains on the system.

Corporate greed plays a large part too. Remember that record profits have been a thing for the last few years. Once things opened up, companies had zero incentive to drop prices down to or near pre-pandemic prices. The pandemic tested how much people would spend on goods and services (and people paid). Vehicles are a good example.

Also the stimulus wasn't new money. It wasn't added by the Fed, it was borrowed by the Treasury from existing money in circulation, mostly in the US. Fiscal stimulus where you give lower-income people money to spend is a great tool when used sparingly.

I'll say that giving an equal amount of money to corporate America was an issue, but I believe that was a Trump era policy. Consider the fraud small business owners committed: we still can't track where much of that money went, and probably never will.

Your explanation is way too simple in a complex global economy. Heck what I wrote is too simple.

[Caribbean Hen]

The pandemic absolutely did not cause the inflation bump in 2021 and beyond. Inflation is always a money supply issue and the biggest culprit for that was the decision by the Biden administration to go all in on Modern Monetary Theory and flood the market with more government spending. $1.9 trillion added to the economy early in the Biden administration, purportedly as "COVID relief", to an economy that was already well on the road to recovery after the pandemic pause - GDP was up 34.8% in 3Q 2020, 4.2% 4Q 2020, and 5.4% in 1Q 2021 - real GDP was already back to pre-pandemic highs before Biden even spent a dime. As for salaries outpacing inflation since post 2021, that's a canard as well. The real issue is real wages, i.e. the buying power of money. We're still negative in terms of real wages over the Biden years - the reason why so many folks, especially the middle and lower class, feel economic pain still today is that they are able to afford less today than they did 4 years ago. The rich folks are doing great today, ironically, because the reckless increase in spending inflated their stock holdings. The gap between the well-off and everyone else in America has only grown in the past four years thanks to ill-advised over spending.

Harris may very well win in November, and considering that Trump is a loathsome lunatic I'm not going to shed any tears over that. But to pretend in any way that the economic policies of the Biden administration have been anything but disastrous is disingenuous and ignores the plain economic data that is right in front of us.

Maybe some economists buy this theory, but most certainly don't. You're completely ignoring the pandemic's effects:

- Lower energy production.
- Lock downs (especially in Asia) shutting down factories.
- Associated materials shortages (lumber, steel, etc.)
- Silicon chip shortages.
- Long delays at ports.
- Labor shortages in all industries, but especially leisure, travel, agricultural, and manufacturing.
- Suspended immigration (magnifying labor shortage).
- Re-shuffling of the workforce due to people being laid off and mass moving of people.
- Housing shortages and the associated price spikes (because everyone was moving and low interest).
- Loss of workforce numbers due to illness and death (further magnifying labor shortages).
- Increased healthcare costs and strains on the system.

Corporate greed plays a large part too. Remember that record profits have been a thing for the last few years. Once things opened up, companies had zero incentive to drop prices down to or near pre-pandemic prices. The pandemic tested how much people would spend on goods and services (and people paid). Vehicles are a good example.

Also the stimulus wasn't new money. It wasn't added by the Fed, it was borrowed by the Treasury from existing money in circulation, mostly in the US. Fiscal stimulus where you give lower-income people money to spend is a great tool when used sparingly.

I'll say that giving an equal amount of money to corporate America was an issue, but I believe that was a Trump era policy. Consider the fraud small business owners committed: we still can't track where much of that money went, and probably never will.

Your explanation is way too simple in a complex global economy. Heck what I wrote is too simple.

I bet you believe the virus did all that

The government virus did

Biden screwed the pooch of the people Dems have claimed they are fighting for … the lower middle class

Biden’s inflation has crushed them but those on the Democratic plantation that are receiving their freebies anyway, won’t notice it as much as the people that are out there doing legitimate work and trying to pay the bills

[∞∞∞]

Damn, I want some of those freebies. I'm still waiting on my Soros shekels.

[UNI88]

Religious content is political content so yes #16 is also talking about religious content.

If religious content is political content as you claim then they are talking about ‘CUT FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ANY SCHOOL PUSHING… POLITICAL CONTENT’ therefore they are talking about cutting federal funding for any school pushing religious content. That isn’t pushing religion.

You are correct trump isn't pushing religion in this instance but Republicans are pushing it in red states like Louisiana and Oklahoma. If they're going to cut federal funding for any school pushing political content, trump is going to have to cut federal funding to Louisiana and Oklahoma and probably other red states that will follow their lead. Funding states the so blatantly disregard the 1st Amendment would be a failure to DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION, OUR BILL OF RIGHTS, AND OUR FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS, INCLUDING FREEDOM OF SPEECH, FREEDOM OF RELIGION, AND THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.

[GannonFan]

The pandemic absolutely did not cause the inflation bump in 2021 and beyond. Inflation is always a money supply issue and the biggest culprit for that was the decision by the Biden administration to go all in on Modern Monetary Theory and flood the market with more government spending. $1.9 trillion added to the economy early in the Biden administration, purportedly as "COVID relief", to an economy that was already well on the road to recovery after the pandemic pause - GDP was up 34.8% in 3Q 2020, 4.2% 4Q 2020, and 5.4% in 1Q 2021 - real GDP was already back to pre-pandemic highs before Biden even spent a dime. As for salaries outpacing inflation since post 2021, that's a canard as well. The real issue is real wages, i.e. the buying power of money. We're still negative in terms of real wages over the Biden years - the reason why so many folks, especially the middle and lower class, feel economic pain still today is that they are able to afford less today than they did 4 years ago. The rich folks are doing great today, ironically, because the reckless increase in spending inflated their stock holdings. The gap between the well-off and everyone else in America has only grown in the past four years thanks to ill-advised over spending.

Harris may very well win in November, and considering that Trump is a loathsome lunatic I'm not going to shed any tears over that. But to pretend in any way that the economic policies of the Biden administration have been anything but disastrous is disingenuous and ignores the plain economic data that is right in front of us.

Maybe some economists buy this theory, but most certainly don't. You're completely ignoring the pandemic's effects:

- Lower energy production.
- Lock downs (especially in Asia) shutting down factories.
- Associated materials shortages (lumber, steel, etc.)
- Silicon chip shortages.
- Long delays at ports.
- Labor shortages in all industries, but especially leisure, travel, agricultural, and manufacturing.
- Suspended immigration (magnifying labor shortage).
- Re-shuffling of the workforce due to people being laid off and mass moving of people.
- Housing shortages and the associated price spikes (because everyone was moving and low interest).
- Loss of workforce numbers due to illness and death (further magnifying labor shortages).
- Increased healthcare costs and strains on the system.

Corporate greed plays a large part too. Remember that record profits have been a thing for the last few years. Once things opened up, companies had zero incentive to drop prices down to or near pre-pandemic prices. The pandemic tested how much people would spend on goods and services (and people paid). Vehicles are a good example.

Also the stimulus wasn't new money. It wasn't added by the Fed, it was borrowed by the Treasury from existing money in circulation, mostly in the US. Fiscal stimulus where you give lower-income people money to spend is a great tool when used sparingly.

I'll say that giving an equal amount of money to corporate America was an issue, but I believe that was a Trump era policy. Consider the fraud small business owners committed: we still can't track where much of that money went, and probably never will.

Your explanation is way too simple in a complex global economy. Heck what I wrote is too simple.

Economists were already warning folks back in December of 2020 that the economy was already heating up and in danger of overheating, and that was when Trump was pushing through his own version of COVID relief in the lame duck session. That was already a mistake. Biden, two months later, doubled down on that mistake and went even further with a much larger stimulus well after the first one was already too much. None of this is even debatable at this point, the outcome of this is plain to see. The economy had roared back, even with the issues you lay out from the pandemic. Inserting a historic amount of government spending on top of that simply created too much money going after too few goods/services that of course results in the rise of prices. That's simple economics there.

You now had too much money chasing too few goods and services. Yes, lock downs in other countries contributed to that but that's why you don't throw more money into the market when there isn't enough to buy. We already had a surge of money coming in from COVID savings from the pandemic, so more government spending was just fuel for the inflation fire. Yes, all those other pandemic related things (backed up ports, lockdowns in Asia, etc) already were known when we decided to be historic and stimulate the economy with at least another $1.9 trillion. And it didn't help that part of that spending spree included incentives to keep labor on the sidelines with vastly extended unemployment benefits and other measures - when we needed people going back to work in a thriving economy we gave enough people incentive to wait to re-enter, further exacerbating the labor shortage.

Corporate greed played absolutely no part until after the inflation was already out of the barn. If corporations just willy-nilly jacked up prices in a stable economy, people would just buy less of it. However, once the government unleashed inflation into the economy and upsetting the stableness, then all bets were off. Sure, some of it was just pure greed (and again, not just big corporations but with anyone selling anything) - people realized they could increase prices and they could use the inflation everyone knew about as cover for raising prices. But a lot of it was also market uncertainty - some of these supply chains are 18-24 months long. I could order something today and it would take 1-2 years before it comes to me. Well, if I know inflation is on the rise, I don't know what that will cost me 1-2 years from now. To cover myself, I'm going to raise my prices now so that I can hope to afford the thing that will take long to get to me. That happened all throughout the economy as there was no longer any certainty of what something would cost tomorrow, a month, or months down the road. You take your best bet and hope you don't underestimate what the cost would be. That keeps inflation going, but inflation doesn't start that way, it's only perpetuated that way. The big mistake was letting inflation start in the first place and that was with the policy blunder to inject a massive stimulus into an already hot economy.

Again, there were plenty of economists at the time, before we passed any of these stimulus measures, saying the economy was already roaring back. The data in GDP growth is clear as day that the economy was back. There were plenty of people warning of inflation, and even more so if we tried to juice the economy like Biden eventually did. His administration then spent the next year trying to convince everyone that transitory inflation was a thing and not to pay any attention to the real impacts of inflation in the economy. And given that we're the largest economy in the world, of course inflation here would have knock-down impacts on most every other economy in the world. Modern Monetary Theory got a full-on dress rehearsal on a macro scale, and it failed historically, and we're still dealing with the impacts of it now with still negative real wages over the past 4 years and increased societal spread between the well-off and everyone else. Given that the rich made off so much better than everyone else in this economy it's shocking that it was a Democratic party initiative that caused all of this. But it's hard to argue against the data we see now.

[UNI88]

Maybe some economists buy this theory, but most certainly don't. You're completely ignoring the pandemic's effects:

- Lower energy production.
- Lock downs (especially in Asia) shutting down factories.
- Associated materials shortages (lumber, steel, etc.)
- Silicon chip shortages.
- Long delays at ports.
- Labor shortages in all industries, but especially leisure, travel, agricultural, and manufacturing.
- Suspended immigration (magnifying labor shortage).
- Re-shuffling of the workforce due to people being laid off and mass moving of people.
- Housing shortages and the associated price spikes (because everyone was moving and low interest).
- Loss of workforce numbers due to illness and death (further magnifying labor shortages).
- Increased healthcare costs and strains on the system.

Corporate greed plays a large part too. Remember that record profits have been a thing for the last few years. Once things opened up, companies had zero incentive to drop prices down to or near pre-pandemic prices. The pandemic tested how much people would spend on goods and services (and people paid). Vehicles are a good example.

Also the stimulus wasn't new money. It wasn't added by the Fed, it was borrowed by the Treasury from existing money in circulation, mostly in the US. Fiscal stimulus where you give lower-income people money to spend is a great tool when used sparingly.

I'll say that giving an equal amount of money to corporate America was an issue, but I believe that was a Trump era policy. Consider the fraud small business owners committed: we still can't track where much of that money went, and probably never will.

Your explanation is way too simple in a complex global economy. Heck what I wrote is too simple.

Economists were already warning folks back in December of 2020 that the economy was already heating up and in danger of overheating, and that was when Trump was pushing through his own version of COVID relief in the lame duck session. That was already a mistake. Biden, two months later, doubled down on that mistake and went even further with a much larger stimulus well after the first one was already too much. None of this is even debatable at this point, the outcome of this is plain to see. The economy had roared back, even with the issues you lay out from the pandemic. Inserting a historic amount of government spending on top of that simply created too much money going after too few goods/services that of course results in the rise of prices. That's simple economics there.

You now had too much money chasing too few goods and services. Yes, lock downs in other countries contributed to that but that's why you don't throw more money into the market when there isn't enough to buy. We already had a surge of money coming in from COVID savings from the pandemic, so more government spending was just fuel for the inflation fire. Yes, all those other pandemic related things (backed up ports, lockdowns in Asia, etc) already were known when we decided to be historic and stimulate the economy with at least another $1.9 trillion. And it didn't help that part of that spending spree included incentives to keep labor on the sidelines with vastly extended unemployment benefits and other measures - when we needed people going back to work in a thriving economy we gave enough people incentive to wait to re-enter, further exacerbating the labor shortage.

Corporate greed played absolutely no part until after the inflation was already out of the barn. If corporations just willy-nilly jacked up prices in a stable economy, people would just buy less of it. However, once the government unleashed inflation into the economy and upsetting the stableness, then all bets were off. Sure, some of it was just pure greed (and again, not just big corporations but with anyone selling anything) - people realized they could increase prices and they could use the inflation everyone knew about as cover for raising prices. But a lot of it was also market uncertainty - some of these supply chains are 18-24 months long. I could order something today and it would take 1-2 years before it comes to me. Well, if I know inflation is on the rise, I don't know what that will cost me 1-2 years from now. To cover myself, I'm going to raise my prices now so that I can hope to afford the thing that will take long to get to me. That happened all throughout the economy as there was no longer any certainty of what something would cost tomorrow, a month, or months down the road. You take your best bet and hope you don't underestimate what the cost would be. That keeps inflation going, but inflation doesn't start that way, it's only perpetuated that way. The big mistake was letting inflation start in the first place and that was with the policy blunder to inject a massive stimulus into an already hot economy.

Again, there were plenty of economists at the time, before we passed any of these stimulus measures, saying the economy was already roaring back. The data in GDP growth is clear as day that the economy was back. There were plenty of people warning of inflation, and even more so if we tried to juice the economy like Biden eventually did. His administration then spent the next year trying to convince everyone that transitory inflation was a thing and not to pay any attention to the real impacts of inflation in the economy. And given that we're the largest economy in the world, of course inflation here would have knock-down impacts on most every other economy in the world. Modern Monetary Theory got a full-on dress rehearsal on a macro scale, and it failed historically, and we're still dealing with the impacts of it now with still negative real wages over the past 4 years and increased societal spread between the well-off and everyone else. Given that the rich made off so much better than everyone else in this economy it's shocking that it was a Democratic party initiative that caused all of this. But it's hard to argue against the data we see now.

[GannonFan]

Also the stimulus wasn't new money. It wasn't added by the Fed, it was borrowed by the Treasury from existing money in circulation, mostly in the US. Fiscal stimulus where you give lower-income people money to spend is a great tool when used sparingly.

And yes, money supply increased greatly. First through the pandemic with savings and multiple stimuluses (at least the last one under Trump was not necessary), and then even more so with the unnecessary and inflation causing splurge of government spending at the start of the Biden administration. A 12% jump in money supply from the start of Biden's administration until the peak in April of 2022, all during which we were being told inflation was only transitory. On top of an economy that was already perhaps too hot and had already seen money supply increases through the pandemic. Fuel on top of fire.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

[Caribbean Hen]

“Corporate greed”

He must be Lizzy Warren

[Caribbean Hen]

Economists were already warning folks back in December of 2020 that the economy was already heating up and in danger of overheating, and that was when Trump was pushing through his own version of COVID relief in the lame duck session. That was already a mistake. Biden, two months later, doubled down on that mistake and went even further with a much larger stimulus well after the first one was already too much. None of this is even debatable at this point, the outcome of this is plain to see. The economy had roared back, even with the issues you lay out from the pandemic. Inserting a historic amount of government spending on top of that simply created too much money going after too few goods/services that of course results in the rise of prices. That's simple economics there.

You now had too much money chasing too few goods and services. Yes, lock downs in other countries contributed to that but that's why you don't throw more money into the market when there isn't enough to buy. We already had a surge of money coming in from COVID savings from the pandemic, so more government spending was just fuel for the inflation fire. Yes, all those other pandemic related things (backed up ports, lockdowns in Asia, etc) already were known when we decided to be historic and stimulate the economy with at least another $1.9 trillion. And it didn't help that part of that spending spree included incentives to keep labor on the sidelines with vastly extended unemployment benefits and other measures - when we needed people going back to work in a thriving economy we gave enough people incentive to wait to re-enter, further exacerbating the labor shortage.

Corporate greed played absolutely no part until after the inflation was already out of the barn. If corporations just willy-nilly jacked up prices in a stable economy, people would just buy less of it. However, once the government unleashed inflation into the economy and upsetting the stableness, then all bets were off. Sure, some of it was just pure greed (and again, not just big corporations but with anyone selling anything) - people realized they could increase prices and they could use the inflation everyone knew about as cover for raising prices. But a lot of it was also market uncertainty - some of these supply chains are 18-24 months long. I could order something today and it would take 1-2 years before it comes to me. Well, if I know inflation is on the rise, I don't know what that will cost me 1-2 years from now. To cover myself, I'm going to raise my prices now so that I can hope to afford the thing that will take long to get to me. That happened all throughout the economy as there was no longer any certainty of what something would cost tomorrow, a month, or months down the road. You take your best bet and hope you don't underestimate what the cost would be. That keeps inflation going, but inflation doesn't start that way, it's only perpetuated that way. The big mistake was letting inflation start in the first place and that was with the policy blunder to inject a massive stimulus into an already hot economy.

Again, there were plenty of economists at the time, before we passed any of these stimulus measures, saying the economy was already roaring back. The data in GDP growth is clear as day that the economy was back. There were plenty of people warning of inflation, and even more so if we tried to juice the economy like Biden eventually did. His administration then spent the next year trying to convince everyone that transitory inflation was a thing and not to pay any attention to the real impacts of inflation in the economy. And given that we're the largest economy in the world, of course inflation here would have knock-down impacts on most every other economy in the world. Modern Monetary Theory got a full-on dress rehearsal on a macro scale, and it failed historically, and we're still dealing with the impacts of it now with still negative real wages over the past 4 years and increased societal spread between the well-off and everyone else. Given that the rich made off so much better than everyone else in this economy it's shocking that it was a Democratic party initiative that caused all of this. But it's hard to argue against the data we see now.

Yep

Unfortunately low info tik tok voters will never get the message

[GannonFan]

“Corporate greed”

He must be Lizzy Warren

He's not wrong, there certainly is "greed", but just not at the "corporate" level, for whatever that means, and not all of it was malicious greed either. Every part in the supply chain for anything, be it a large corporation or a mom and pop pizza place type business, has to determine how much to charge to make sure they cover their own costs and hopefully make a profit. Some businesses make low profit margins (1%-3%), others, like mine, don't even touch business that isn't at least 20% margins (and we only start new markets at 50% margins). I'm sure plenty of others are like that. When it becomes hard to know how much to charge to keep those margins (because everyone you buy from is also jacking up prices in very short time frames) then you have to take an educated guess of what to raise your selling prices, and you don't want your guess to be too low, so you make sure it's at least high enough to make sure. When you over-guess, that helps to feed further inflation. That's why large economic uncertainty over a period of time is bad, the virtual horse getting out of the barn analogy for inflation. Stable markets lead to better guesses and less "greed" perpetuating already uncorked inflation.

[kalm]

Those prices don't mean anything without context, especially since salaries outpaced inflation post-2021. The pandemic was the culprit for big inflation in 2021, and that was a global problem. The US weathered the storm better than most countries and avoided a recession.

Btw I go to Lidl for groceries and looked up my local prices: $2.59 for a gallon of milk and $1.69 for a stick of butter. I don't buy cookies.

The pandemic absolutely did not cause the inflation bump in 2021 and beyond.

Dude, let it go. Every country on earth just happened to experience inflation at the same time? Completely unrelated to the pandemic with its lockdowns, stock market implications, supply chain issues….

No real economists are saying that. The pandemic caused inflation. The degree to which and how long governments and central banks decided to handle that is a valid argument. Stick to that.

[kalm]

The pandemic absolutely did not cause the inflation bump in 2021 and beyond. Inflation is always a money supply issue and the biggest culprit for that was the decision by the Biden administration to go all in on Modern Monetary Theory and flood the market with more government spending. $1.9 trillion added to the economy early in the Biden administration, purportedly as "COVID relief", to an economy that was already well on the road to recovery after the pandemic pause - GDP was up 34.8% in 3Q 2020, 4.2% 4Q 2020, and 5.4% in 1Q 2021 - real GDP was already back to pre-pandemic highs before Biden even spent a dime. As for salaries outpacing inflation since post 2021, that's a canard as well. The real issue is real wages, i.e. the buying power of money. We're still negative in terms of real wages over the Biden years - the reason why so many folks, especially the middle and lower class, feel economic pain still today is that they are able to afford less today than they did 4 years ago. The rich folks are doing great today, ironically, because the reckless increase in spending inflated their stock holdings. The gap between the well-off and everyone else in America has only grown in the past four years thanks to ill-advised over spending.

Harris may very well win in November, and considering that Trump is a loathsome lunatic I'm not going to shed any tears over that. But to pretend in any way that the economic policies of the Biden administration have been anything but disastrous is disingenuous and ignores the plain economic data that is right in front of us.

Maybe some economists buy this theory, but most certainly don't. You're completely ignoring the pandemic's effects:

- Lower energy production.
- Lock downs (especially in Asia) shutting down factories.
- Associated materials shortages (lumber, steel, etc.)
- Silicon chip shortages.
- Long delays at ports.
- Labor shortages in all industries, but especially leisure, travel, agricultural, and manufacturing.
- Suspended immigration (magnifying labor shortage).
- Re-shuffling of the workforce due to people being laid off and mass moving of people.
- Housing shortages and the associated price spikes (because everyone was moving and low interest).
- Loss of workforce numbers due to illness and death (further magnifying labor shortages).
- Increased healthcare costs and strains on the system.

Corporate greed plays a large part too. Remember that record profits have been a thing for the last few years. Once things opened up, companies had zero incentive to drop prices down to or near pre-pandemic prices. The pandemic tested how much people would spend on goods and services (and people paid). Vehicles are a good example.

Also the stimulus wasn't new money. It wasn't added by the Fed, it was borrowed by the Treasury from existing money in circulation, mostly in the US. Fiscal stimulus where you give lower-income people money to spend is a great tool when used sparingly.

I'll say that giving an equal amount of money to corporate America was an issue, but I believe that was a Trump era policy. Consider the fraud small business owners committed: we still can't track where much of that money went, and probably never will.

Your explanation is way too simple in a complex global economy. Heck what I wrote is too simple.

This.

[kalm]

Bernanke and Blanchard introduce an analytical model that focuses on the behavior of wages, prices, and short- and long-term inflation expectations, with labor market slack and shocks to prices taken as given. The authors use empirical data on wages and prices to test their “model of wage-price determination.” They examine data from two periods: first quarter 1990 to fourth quarter 2019 (the pre-COVID period) and first quarter 2020 to first quarter 2023 (the COVID period). The model allows the authors to “decompose” price and wage inflation and determine its sources at a more specific level. In particular, they examine demand issues, such as food and energy prices, and supply issues, such as the shortages caused by production shutdowns and other supply-chain disruptions during the pandemic. In addition, Bernanke and Blanchard use the ratio of job vacancies to unemployed workers in their analysis, arguing that it measures labor market tightness more accurately. The ratio increased from less than 1.0 in April 2021 to 1.9 a year later, the highest level on record.

From their analysis, the authors present three main findings:

1. The shocks to food and energy prices contributed substantially to the sharp rise in inflation during the COVID-19 period. Energy price shocks were the primary cause of the high inflation rates from late 2021 to the middle of 2022. Lower energy prices in the second half of 2022 contributed to the inflation decline during that period.

2. The combined effects of increased demand for durables and shortages caused by supply-chain disruptions were the main source of inflation in the second quarter of 2021. Both the direct and indirect effects of those supply-chain problems remained substantial through the end of 2022.

3. Tight labor-market conditions, one of the main concerns of the early critics of U.S fiscal and monetary policy, contributed only slightly to inflation. In fact, the tight labor market affected the economy negatively in 2020 and early 2021. Since then, however, the traditional Phillips-curve effect has begun to reemerge, with the high vacancy-to-unemployment ratio becoming an increasingly important factor in the high inflation rates.

Bernanke and Blanchard argue that the critics’ concerns of higher inflation were correct. But the sources of the high inflation differed from those the critics had anticipated. The authors conclude that price shocks in product markets were the leading cause of the initial rise in inflation. However, as labor markets began to overheat in 2022, with unsustainable employment increases, a high ratio of job openings to unemployed workers, and low levels of quits, labor market tightness increasingly became the main cause of the persistently high inflation rates.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/beyon ... period.htm

[Caribbean Hen]

The pandemic absolutely did not cause the inflation bump in 2021 and beyond.

Dude, let it go. Every country on earth just happened to experience inflation at the same time? Completely unrelated to the pandemic with its lockdowns, stock market implications, supply chain issues….

No real economists are saying that. The pandemic caused inflation. The degree to which and how long governments and central banks decided to handle that is a valid argument. Stick to that.

Everything is pegged to the US

When you pull back the curtain you’ll see Joey Rotten back there, his damage was not contained to the States

[kalm]

Dude, let it go. Every country on earth just happened to experience inflation at the same time? Completely unrelated to the pandemic with its lockdowns, stock market implications, supply chain issues….

No real economists are saying that. The pandemic caused inflation. The degree to which and how long governments and central banks decided to handle that is a valid argument. Stick to that.

Everything is pegged to the US

When you pull back the curtain you’ll see Joey Rotten back there, his damage was not contained to the States

Sshhh…quiet. Adults are talking about economics here.

[kalm]

These are extremely solid ideas…if implemented. As long as you’re into capitalism, competition, and independently owned businesses. Which I am.

[UNI88]

The pandemic absolutely did not cause the inflation bump in 2021 and beyond.

Dude, let it go. Every country on earth just happened to experience inflation at the same time? Completely unrelated to the pandemic with its lockdowns, stock market implications, supply chain issues….

No real economists are saying that. The pandemic caused inflation. The degree to which and how long governments and central banks decided to handle that is a valid argument. Stick to that.

Dude, the US wasn't the only country trying to spend it's way out of the pandemic. Other countries used stimulus as well. Also "the United States is the world's single largest economy (at market exchange rates), accounting for almost 22 percent of global output and over a third of stock market capitalization." If the US experiences inflation, the world feels it.

Yes, there was likely going to be some inflation after the pandemic ended but it wouldn't have been nearly as bad as it was without excessive government spending flooding the market with too much money chasing too few goods. That spending made inflation inevitable and supercharged it to the point where it was painful rather than just mildly unpleasant.

It was pure hubris to believe that government could dictate to the market and that the market wouldn't respond.

[GannonFan]

The pandemic absolutely did not cause the inflation bump in 2021 and beyond.

Dude, let it go. Every country on earth just happened to experience inflation at the same time? Completely unrelated to the pandemic with its lockdowns, stock market implications, supply chain issues….

No real economists are saying that. The pandemic caused inflation. The degree to which and how long governments and central banks decided to handle that is a valid argument. Stick to that.

Yes, worldwide economy, and we're the biggest impact on it. What happens here will certainly cause ripple effects. It always has, so not sure why it wouldn't now. No one has ever said that the pandemic didn't impact this. Heck, it was ignoring the situation we were in coming out of the pandemic (labor shortage, already pent-up demand and increased money supply) that made the MMT efforts by the Biden administration (delaying the return to the labor force by 9 months, increasing money supply even further as demonstrated by the chart already shared) as damaging as they were. We probably would've had an inflation bump had no one done anything - we ended up with an inflation spike because we did the wrong thing. And even when inflation has disappeared we still have even longer pains dealing with the outcomes of that inflation spike (i.e. negative real wages).

[UNI88]

These are extremely solid ideas…if implemented. As long as you’re into capitalism, competition, and independently owned businesses. Which I am.

So solid that the tweet was deleted?