The rate of inflation has reached the highest level in nearly 13 years as President Biden has unleashed the money printers to pay people to stay unemployed, therefore increasing the overall money supply while overall decreasing production – two pathways that raise
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The rate of inflation has reached the highest level in nearly 13 years as President Biden has unleashed the money printers to pay people to stay unemployed, therefore increasing the overall money supply while overall decreasing production – two pathways that raise prices.
Bloomberg News reported that the Labor Department announced Wednesday, “The consumer price index increased 0.8% from the prior month, reflecting gains in nearly every major category and a sign burgeoning demand is giving companies latitude to pass on higher costs.”
The inflation rate doubled the highest projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists. So, yet again, Biden has lived up to the legends of his ability to cause an economy to only underperform. As previously reported after Biden managed to increase the unemployment rate while adding 750,000 jobs less than projected, “The economy under President Biden has defied expectations as economists are consistently surprised at how poorly the Biden economy is able to perform.”
U.S. inflation rises more than forecast, hits 4.2% in April on base effect https://t.co/COWmOBzJ4u pic.twitter.com/7jPuAbuItq
— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) May 12, 2021
After the announcement the Washington Post tried to manipulate the numbers by removing the effects of gasoline and food prices on inflation, posting a graph titled “Inflation looks even tamer after removing the effects of volatile gasoline and food prices.”
Author Matt Palumbo replied to the graph on Twitter, writing, “Wow, if you exclude all the items whose prices are rising, inflation isn’t that big a deal after all!”
Wow, if you exclude all the items whose prices are rising, inflation isn't that big a deal after all! pic.twitter.com/IUrpnRsPu2
— Matt Palumbo (@MattPalumbo12) May 12, 2021
Additionally, when using the criteria the Washington Post used in their graph, the increase in inflation rate ends up being the highest since 1982 – which can only be described as “even tamer” when manipulating the definition of “tame” as much as the Washington Post manipulated numbers for their graph.
On Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told unemployed Floridians that May will be the last month they can collect unemployment benefits without proving they are looking for a job.
“Governor Ron DeSantis lifted the requirement that people receiving benefits look for work early in the pandemic when unemployment was rising and few were hiring,” CBS Miami reported. “But DeSantis has lifted restrictions on businesses, and the unemployment rate is below the national average.”
“Normally when you’re getting unemployment, the whole idea is that it’s temporary, and you need to be looking for work to be able to get off unemployment,” DeSantis said. “It was a disaster, so we suspended those job search requirements. I think it’s pretty clear now — we have an abundance of job openings.”
“We absolutely can put more people to work,” he continued. “The demand is there. Businesses want to hire more people, and I think we can go in that direction very soon.”
“I think now we’re in just a different situation, you have a surplus of jobs, particularly in restaurant, lodging, hospitality, that people want to hire,” DeSantis said. “I mean, you see the signs all over the place. Look, that’s a good problem to have. But we also just want to make sure, like, look, if you’re really unemployed, can’t get a job, that’s one thing. But making sure that you’re doing your due diligence to look for work, and making sure those incentives align, better.”
The unemployment rate has been rapidly decreasing in Florida. The Miami Herald reported in March that Florida’s unemployment rate had reached “the lowest among any large state in the nation.” However, the state’s overall labor force, which is both employed and unemployed workers, has decreased 3.7% since pre-pandemic levels – a result of people deciding to live off the government and stop looking for a job.
The economy under President Biden has defied expectations as economists are consistently surprised at how poorly the Biden economy is able to perform. New data released by the Labor Department on Friday shows that the Biden economy has somehow managed to increase the unemployment rate as it struggles to recover from the artificially-created recession.
“The United States added 266,000 jobs in April, according to data released by the Labor Department Friday—much worse than the 1 million job gains economists expected and far fewer than the 916,000 jobs added in March, indicating that the long-tepid labor market recovery is slowing down again even as stocks and corporate earnings rip higher,” Forbes reported.
“The unemployment rate ticked up to 6.1% in April, as compared to 6% in March; the metric hit a record high of 14.7% in April 2020,” the report states. “There are now 9.8 million unemployed people in the United States, higher than 9.7 million in March and much higher than the pre-pandemic level of 4 million in February 2020, the government said.”
In contrast to the record low unemployment levels for black and Hispanic Americans under former President Trump, “April’s report also continued to show stark differences in unemployment by race, with minority groups such as Black Americans and Hispanics facing above-average unemployment rates of 9.7% and 7.9%, respectively.”
Former President Trump’s economy was responsible for the longest and best performing bull market in history, which ended when COVID-19 emerged and governments forced businesses to close – creating an artificial recession. President Biden should be able to ride the recovery of the recession, but it seems that his policies are only able to be overestimated. While Biden’s economy has drastically failed to meet expectations, Trump’s economy consistently exceeded them, nearly doubling projected GDP growth during the third quarter of last year.
President Biden’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure package, which would raise the federal corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%, would hurt the U.S. economy and result in one million jobs lost within two years, according to a new study from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) conducted by Rice University economists.
The study estimates that Biden’s infrastructure plan will result in a GDP loss of $117 billion by 2023, $190 billion in 2026, and by $119 billion in 2031. The study estimates, “The reduction in hours worked would be equivalent to an employment decline of approximately 1 million full-time jobs in 2023.”
It adds that, “Real wages would fall by 0.6% in the long run, and total labor compensation, including wages and benefits, would decline by 0.6% initially before falling by 0.3% after 10 years. In the long run, total compensation would also decline by 0.6%.”
The corporate tax increase alone would undermine the post-pandemic recovery of the U.S. economy, while putting the United States at a competitive disadvantage by increasing the cost of production. According to the Tax Foundation, “An increase in the federal corporate tax rate to 28 percent would raise the U.S. federal-state combined tax rate to 32.34 percent, higher than every country in the OECD, the G7, and all our major trade partners and competitors including China.”
An increase in the federal corporate tax rate to 28 percent would raise the U.S. federal-state combined tax rate to 32.34 percent, higher than every country in the OECD, the G7, and all our major trade partners and competitors including China. pic.twitter.com/MA8D7R3jx1
— Tax Foundation (@TaxFoundation) April 5, 2021
The plan to undermine post-pandemic recovery comes as other OECD countries plan to do the opposite, reducing corporate tax rates and implementing other changes to boost domestic investment.
As the Tax Foundation points out, “When the U.S. last had the highest corporate tax rate in the OECD, prior to tax reform in 2017 with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the U.S. experienced several years of economic malaise, including chronically low levels of investment, productivity, and wage growth, as well as major distortions and avoidance schemes in the corporate sector.”
On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that Republicans would not support President Biden’s $2.5 trillion infrastructure bill, explaining that the bill would exacerbate the debt and increased taxes would hurt the economy.
“That package that they’re putting together now, as much as we would like to address infrastructure, is not going to get support from our side. Because I think the last thing the economy needs right now is a big, whopping tax increase,” McConnell said, according to Politico.
“You’re either alarmed about the level of national debt and the future impact of that on our children and our grandchildren or you aren’t,” McConnell added. “My view of infrastructure is we ought to build that which we can afford, and not either whack the economy with major tax increases or run up the national debt even more.”
The Biden administration claims that corporate tax rate changes will “more than pay for the mostly one-time investments in the American Jobs Plan.” However, according to the Biden administration’s optimistic estimates, the proposed corporate tax hikes will take until 2036 to generate that much revenue.
Only 5 percent of the bill is directed towards infrastructure, with the rest of the bill fulfilling items on the Democrats’ wish list under the guise of being labeled an infrastructure bill. For example, The Washington Post reported, “nearly 20 percent of the bill goes toward expanding caregiving for the elderly and disabled by building more care centers and expanding access to home-based care, and another 13 percent goes toward boosting the U.S. manufacturing sector with large investments in semiconductors and green energy.”
Biden has claimed that the bill would create jobs and be the largest “investment in American jobs” in decades. However, when the government “creates” jobs, it is only misallocating money from the private sector to the less efficient public sector; meaning the number of jobs “created” by the government will be offset by jobs lost in the private sector.
The non-partisan Tax Foundation estimates that Biden’s proposed corporate tax hike would “reduce long-run economic output by 0.8 percent, eliminate 159,000 jobs, and reduce wages by 0.7 percent. Workers across the income scale would bear much of the tax increase. For example, the bottom 20 percent of earners would on average see a 1.45 percent drop in after-tax income in the long run.”
According to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, federal investments increase output at half the rate of private sector investments, 5 percent compared to 10 percent. The Tax Foundation explains, “In other words, a $100 million federal investment would increase GDP by $5 million, whereas the same private investment would boost GDP by $10 million.”
