The Patriot Post® · Is Joe Really Running on Bidenomics?

“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics,” Mark Twain once famously said. And one of Joe Biden’s claims about the economy is living proof of it.

See if you can spot the technically true statistic in the following sentence that’s worse than a damned lie: “My Administration has created more jobs in two years than any previous administration has created in the first four years.”

Time’s up. As the Claremont Institute’s Nick Short tells us: “72% of all job gains since 2021 were simply jobs that were being recovered from the pandemic, not new job creation. Prior to the pandemic, job creation under Trump was 6.7 million — 3 million more jobs than the current president.”

So you see, Joe, the vast majority of those jobs you’re taking credit for are due to our economy having fallen off a cliff when your business partners, the Communist Chinese, unleashed COVID-19 on the world.

Nonetheless, Joe Biden wants to talk about the economy. And, frankly, we can’t blame him. Because fielding questions about Bidenomics — which is a helpful term to describe an economy beset by high prices, low wages, and no growth — sure beats the alternative, which is fielding questions about the Biden Crime Family.

Yes, even though the latest NBC News poll shows 68% of voters have worries about his mental and physical health, 80-year-old Joe Biden is running for reelection. Thus, if he manages to keep from getting impeached or being forced to resign in disgrace, the economy will be on everyone’s mind.

As The Washington Free Beacon reports: “Faced with high inflation and a shaky stock market, half of Americans believe they are worse off now than they were a year ago. And starting Wednesday, President Joe Biden is planning to tell people that this is a good reason to vote for him, traveling to Chicago to tout ‘Bidenomics’ in what his aides are calling a ‘cornerstone’ address.”

Sure enough, there he was yesterday, decrying the very economic policies that have made the U.S. economy the envy of the world. “The trickle-down approach failed the middle class. It failed America, it blew up the deficit, it increased inequity and it weakened our infrastructure. It stripped the dignity, pride and hope out of communities, one after another.”

Then, this: “I’m not here to declare victory on the economy. I’m here to say we have a plan that is turning things around incredibly quickly.”

Whatever, dude.

If things are “turning around quickly,” then why aren’t regular folks feeling it?

“The answer,” as the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editors point out, “can be found in one lesson by looking at the nearby chart. It tracks average real hourly earnings for all workers in the private economy across the Biden Presidency, and it tells an ugly story about the impact of the worst inflation in 40 years and the standard of living. This is the inflation that Mr. Biden did so much to ignite with all of his spending.”

Here’s that chart they’re talking about, which uses data from the nonpartisan Bureau of Labor Statistics:

So rather than folks feeling like they’re getting ahead, as they did with the real wage growth in the Trump years, they now think they’re falling behind in the Biden years. And they’re right. No wonder folks are kicking their dogs.

“None of this progress was an accident or inevitable,” the Biden spinners tell us. And here, we have to agree with them. This miserable spot we now find ourselves in wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t inevitable. If the Democrats and their co-conspirators in the FBI, the DOJ, the intelligence services, and Big Tech hadn’t rigged the election in favor of Joe Biden, we’d be enjoying the fruits of a roaring Republican economy under Donald Trump.

Elections, though, have consequences. And to the, ahem, 81 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 because they didn’t like Donald Trump’s bedside manner, well, you’re getting exactly what you voted for. Good and hard. Be better next time.

Joe Biden has alternately embraced Bidenomics and said he doesn’t know “what the hell it is.” Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, though, offered this definition: “Bidenonmics is an economic theory whereby the closer you are to the Biden family, the more likely you are to get rich.”

As Fox News reports: “Biden took office in January 2021 with an inflation rate of a little over 1%, which hiked to 9% by June 2022, and has since fallen to 4%. A Fox News poll from May found 83% of respondents said the nation has a negative economic condition. The poll found Biden’s approval rating on the economy at 32%.”

Are we going to believe Joe Biden or our wallets?

As the GOP’s fact-checkers note: “Biden’s claim that ‘Bidenomics is working’ couldn’t be further from the truth. In Biden’s America, savings are down, real wages are down, and economic confidence is down.”

Or is consumer confidence actually, inexplicably, at its highest level in 18 months? It depends on who you ask.

But Bidenomics, any way you slice it, is nothing to crow about.

“Bidenomics,” says Heritage Foundation research fellow EJ Antoni, “has been defined by 40-year-high inflation, record drops in labor productivity, anemic economic growth, growing credit card debt, rising interest rates, insipid labor force participation, onerous regulation, falling real incomes, and runaway government spending, borrowing, and printing of money. Distilled down to a single word, Bidenomics means 'failure.’”

When Joe Biden took office in January 2021, inflation was just over 1%. Seventeen months later, with the passage of his ruinous and ridiculously named Inflation Reduction Act having exerted its inevitable influence, inflation shot up to 9%. It’s since fallen to 4%, but that’s still twice as high as the target. And that’s what Bidenflation will do. That’s what printing an extra $740 billion will do — regardless of whether you slap a deceitful name on it.

A Fox News poll from May found 83% of respondents said the nation has a negative economic condition. The poll found Biden’s approval rating on the economy at 32%.

And yet despite all this, Joe Biden still wants to talk about the economy.

This should be fun.