The Patriot Post® · Economic Smoke and Mirrors

Who are you going to believe — Joe Biden or your lying eyes?

That’s the silly question we can all answer very easily after the president’s ridiculous remarks yesterday on the economy in general and inflation in particular.

The economy is historically great, he said. Nobody’s worried about inflation, he said. Someone doth protest too much.

Biden went out to reassure the country about the state of the economy and the stock market promptly lost 700 points. That’s obviously overly simplistic, but it also speaks volumes of the confidence Americans have in the man vainly attempting to read coherently from the teleprompter.

To be sure, the stock market is doing well on the whole, and there are plenty of other indicators of economic health and growth. Yet as all presidents are wont to do, Biden dismissed or ignored the bad signs and claimed undue credit for the good things.

“There’s nobody suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way,” he said. “No serious economist.”

Nobody except for serious economists.

“Our experts,” he said, “believe and the data shows that most of the price increases we’ve seen are — were expected and expected to be temporary.”

Biden’s “experts” have been wrong in their inflation expectations for months.

“My administration understands that if we were to ever experience unchecked inflation over the long term that would pose real challenges to our economy,” Biden explained. “ So while we’re confident that isn’t what we are seeing today, we’re going to remain vigilant about any response that is needed.”

Translation: We know there’s unchecked inflation, but we’re going to tell you there’s not while we print more money for our redistribution schemes.

“If we increase the availability of quality, affordable childcare, eldercare, [and] paid leave, more people will enter the workforce,” the president argued. “These steps will enhance our productivity — raising wages without raising prices. That won’t increase inflation. It will take the pressure off of inflation, give a boost to our workforce, which leads to lower prices in the years ahead.”

The exact opposite is the case. Biden’s so-called “American Rescue Plan” has added to the cradle-to-grave welfare state, including paying people more to not work than to find jobs. That, in turn, has caused businesses to raise wages in a desperate bid to fill openings with workers. His insistence that such wage pressure doesn’t raise prices is delusional and deceitful.

As Mark Alexander put it last week, “The economic consequence of Biden’s ploy has been to suppress economic recovery and simultaneously inflate prices for all Americans.”

More of the same is all Biden has to offer.

There are two big hurdles to economic recovery at the moment. First is still COVID, though maybe more accurately it’s the messaging coming from the Biden administration and other Democrat leaders. They’re still trotting out Anthony Fauci to insist that we need to be masking up our three-year-olds while Biden is blaming the unvaccinated for every pandemic and economic woe. Rather than exuding optimism about a waning pandemic, the administration is still sowing fear.

Second is, again, Biden’s rampant spending plans. After a year of huge amounts of emergency spending, adding trillions of dollars in more spending, financed by low-interest debt and money printing, is only going to hamper economic growth with higher prices for everything. Biden is goosing demand without increasing supply. That’s a textbook recipe for inflation.

If Biden’s not careful, the only winning he’s going to spur is for Republicans in 2022.