You know that recently I spent some serious time looking for Larry Kudlow. After becoming the “cable guy” for my parents, I finally found him. Now, Larry himself has taken some time to call out lies about the American economy being told by Joe Biden. Rather than calling Biden a liar, Kudlow refers to Biden’s statement that “real income for the bottom half of earners is up by 3.4% since I took office” as “an incorrect assertion, a massive leap into heavy cognitive dissonance or, how about, a new Bottomless Pinocchio.” Kudlow continues:
The facts under Biden are this: the bottom 25% of income earners have seen their real incomes fall by 2.3%, while the second income quartile has fallen 3.9%.
These are data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and, indeed, over the course of the Biden presidency, average weekly earnings adjusted for inflation have fallen 2.1% overall for the entire workforce. This measure of collapsing worker incomes has declined 26 consecutive months. Nothing like this has ever happened before.
This is why Mr. Biden’s economic policy approval has fallen as much as take-home worker pay has dropped. In the latest Democracy Institute poll, Joe Biden’s economic approval rating crashed to 26%.
Other polls corroborate his decline and I want to point out that a number of presidential prediction models, especially the Professor Ray Fair model at Yale, relies heavily on after-inflation measures of worker pay.
Another key measure which has similarly dropped under Biden is real disposable income, that measures worker pay after inflation and after taxes. Also, Mr. Biden brags continuously that he has curbed inflation. True enough, inflation has come down from a peak of nearly 10% to currently around 5%.
5% is a very big inflation number, however. It’s over twice the Federal Reserve’s 2% target and, in fact, during the entire Biden presidency, CPI has increased 15.6% with energy prices rising 31.2% and grocery prices rising 19.7%.
Meanwhile, the economy has sagged, badly. In Mr. Biden’s first full year, that is 2022, the economy increased by less than 1%. Over the last 5 quarters, or 15 months, the economy has grown by barely 1%. The second quarter ending in June will probably come in about the same. Remember Mr. Biden inherited a 6.5% growth rate with roughly 1.5% inflation from his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Action Line: The Biden economy has been painful for many Americans. Inflation and shortages have hurt many Americans simply trying to help their families survive. Don’t sit idle while Joe Biden hurts your family’s bottom line. Click here to subscribe to my free Survive & Thrive letter and become a Survivor.
E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy
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