White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain recently endorsed the idea that inflation and supply-chain struggles Americans are struggling with are “high class problems.”
I’m in no position to comment on whether the inflation spike we’re experiencing is “transitory” or not (though, metaphysically speaking, isn’t everything!). Maybe it will be a short-term problem sparked by supply shocks and pent-up post-COVID demand, or maybe inflation will linger for years and become a self-fulfilling prophecy due to expectations. Whatever the case, a president who feels comfortable with taking credit for “creating” millions of jobs after state-compelled shutdowns is likely going to be blamed. You can’t have it both ways.
And while it’s not unreasonable for an economist such as Jason Furman to point out that, in the big picture, most of America’s tribulations are “high class,” it’s quite a different story for the administration to dismiss those concerns. Because in our reality — the one where the president promised to fix everything — the inflation debate is important for a number of reasons.
One, the administration is, as we speak, campaigning to cram through a welfare-state bill that could dump another $5.5 trillion into the economy. What justification is there for unprecedented spending when inflation is accelerating? Democrats have already passed an additional nearly $2 trillion in expenditures in the first six months of the Biden administration, and the economy is still underachieving.
When asked whether he believed that passing another colossal spending bill would exacerbate the problem, the same president who contends that his $5.5 trillion welfare-state expansion bill costs “zero” argues that more spending would “reduce inflation, reduce inflation, reduce inflation.”
Biden has waved away inflation concerns on numerous occasions, once arguing that “no serious economist” was suggesting that “unchecked inflation” was on the way. This was four months ago. We are now in our sixth month of historic spikes. I’m not sure if Biden considers Larry Summers, former Treasury secretary for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s National Economic Council director, a serious economist, but Summers seems to believe runaway inflation and bottleneck supply-chain problems pose a serious risk to the economy.
As a political matter, inflation isn’t some abstract philosophical debate but something tangible and historically fraught. The older you are, the most sensitive you likely are to the potential harms of inflation, having either lived through the 1970s or heard about that dreadful decade from your parents. Even as a kid, I can remember the specter of “inflation” hanging over the adult world. The era’s stagnation was fixed only with the institution of high interest rates and a couple of serious recessions. Inflation conjures up images of gas lines and “crisis of confidence” speeches.
For retirees, inflation means instant wealth destruction. For everyone else, it means immediate hikes in the cost of living. Consumer prices, led by energy and food prices, have increased 5.4% overall since last year, which is the largest increase since 1991. The producer price index is up 8.6% over the past year — in its sixth month of record highs. Social Security benefits will rise nearly 6% for retirees in 2022 because of a cost-of-living adjustment — the biggest surge in decades. So, apparently, the government believes the transitory period will extend at least into the next year.
Gas is up 42% over last year as well — the cost of which is embedded in nearly everything (and counterproductive anti-gouging policies will surely make the situation worse, but that’s another story). This week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said it expects households to see their heating bills jump as much as 54% compared with last winter.
Even as Klain was retweeting Furman, Politico reported that the White House has been “consulting” the oil industry “to seek a remedy for rising gasoline prices as surging inflation threatens to tarnish the economic recovery.” This comes a few months after Biden asked OPEC to increase output.
This is all quite confusing, as, even now, Democrats are campaigning to pass policies designed to increase the cost of energy by limiting the availability of fossil fuels. Perhaps Biden, unmoored from economic reality, will tell us that higher energy costs are actually good for the economy. But it’s hard to think of anything more unpopular with the electorate than paying a lot for gas or food, high-class problem or not.
David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and author of “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
This deranged, corrupt puppet president Biden and his traitorous Democrat Party handlers and masters have become our country’s most destructive and deadliest ENEMY!!!
Even in other countries they chant “F*** Joe Biden”,
this Democrat party’s puppet president has no respect anywhere in the world.
“White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain recently endorsed the idea that inflation and supply-chain struggles Americans are struggling with are “high class problems.”,,,,but not just high class. When the illegally promoted to captain of your American Ship of state, takes off in a fog and tries to land it safely in a brain fog, it’s not just THE PEOPLE in first class that perish but also the people in the cheap seats. Acting like good is bad, bad is good, up is down and down is up during stolen Presidential campaigns might get you temporarily employed as President, but once you take control of the American ship of state, such pathological indoctrinations can get us all in crash and burn mode. Each 1% tick up in interest rates on our current $28 Trillion Gross national debt will cost taxpayers $280 billion EACH YEAR in interest, to mostly Chinese and foreign lenders, just to give Democrats the ability to bribe their way into power in perpetual debt paid for by others.
How exactly will his white house “PAY” though??? Will they get charged criminally?
Doubt it
Will they get forced to resign?
Highly doubtful.
He wouldn’t know class of any level given the fact he works for the greatest diabolical saboteur that America has had the utmost misfortune to have creep into our whitehouse.
No—it is high-class indifference to the problems that the elite class has created. They are insulated from what everyday American citizens deal with—they are totally unaware of the repercussions that they set in motion with their warped thinking. They have their connections and they will always be able to get what they need or want no matter how far out of reach things are for the working class.
What they know about what you and I encounter every day is what they read in the news—and that is beyond their understanding because they don’t experience the ill effects of their policies like the rest of us do. I hope their day of reckoning is not far away.
Let’s Go Brandon
Oh and by the way Nikki Haley, stop asking for donations. Your political career ended the day you turned on the President and showed your RINO colors. At that exact point you became another zero.
Isn’t classifying people systematically racist? Probably only applies to the moral God fearing American who believes in living decently. In other words not making every attempt possible to screw your fellow man. Or have they removed the word man from our allowed words yet?
Just when you thought the Biden administration couldn’t “utter” any more stupid ideas they come out and prove you wrong!
Never ever think the left’s done with proving us how stupid they can get…