The Biden administration wants voters to think “Bidenomics” is an economic miracle compared with what came before. President Joe Biden hailed his economic program last week during a speech in Philadelphia. As the old saying goes, “There are lies, ****** lies, and statistics” and “The devil is in the details.”
“You know, I came to office determined to strengthen the middle class. I often say — and I mean it sincerely — you know, Wall Street — good folks down there, but they didn’t build the middle class, they didn’t build America. The middle class was built by the middle class, and unions build the middle class, and it changed the economic direction of this country,” Biden said, saying that “Bidenomics is working. “Because we — I got tired of trickle-down economics. I’ve never been a big fan. If the wealthy do very well — I’m a capitalist. I like the wealthy to be able to be wealthy. But if they — the mere fact they do well doesn’t mean that everybody else does well.
Biden continued: “And here’s what it looks like. Over 13 million new jobs built across the country and nearly half a million of them here in Pennsylvania just in the last two and half years. Eight hundred thousand manufacturing jobs, twenty-eight thousand here in Pennsylvania alone in the last two and half years.”
The Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley said last week that it expects a modest increase in the U.S. GDP from an anemic .6% to a still anemic 1.3%.
“Incoming data now point to a more comfortable soft landing than we had anticipated, led by public investment in infrastructure and nonresidential structures investment,” Morgan Stanley economist Ellen Zentner wrote in a note dated Thursday.
The Devil in the Biden Job Number Details
Biden’s job rhetoric fails to account for the return of millions of jobs lost when the economy shut down due to the pandemic. It’s not as if his policies were directly responsible for the job growth.
“And while Bidenomics has allegedly created some 13.4 million new jobs, this number should be taken with a grain of salt. Most are what David Stockman, one of former President Ronald Reagan’s budget directors, calls ‘born again jobs,’” Mercatus Institute economist Vernique DeRugy wrote. “That’s because they aren’t actually new—they are simply the product of reopening the economy after the terrible COVID-19 lockdowns. Many of the remaining jobs were created by the same inflationary infusion of cash that overheated the economy. This is nothing to brag about.”
Financial Times columnist Edward Luce notes that a black nurse he met during a recent doctor’s visit told him she plans to vote for former President Donald Trump next year because she feels she was better off when he was president.
“Anecdotes can be misleading. But there is data to back up the nurse’s view. Under Trump, US blue-collar wage growth beat inflation for the first time in years. Under Biden they have fallen in real terms. This is why barely a third of Americans approve of Biden’s economic record. It is also partly why only a third of African-Americans — an overwhelmingly pro-Democratic bloc — say that Biden’s policies have helped black people,” Luce wrote.
He notes the U.S. has rebounded from COVID better than other countries. Unemployment may be 3.6%, a 50-year low, but Americans aren’t feeling the joy.
“US mortgage costs are increasingly beyond most people’s budgets. Inflation is ranked as the highest concern(opens a new window) by US voters. The only happy people are those at the top with exposure to the stock market, which has had an unexpectedly sharp rebound this year. How the rest feel will be a big factor in what happens next year,” Luce wrote.
DeRugy notes that Biden’s spending was largely responsible for the growth of inflation during his administration. It peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 and fell to around 3% this month; however, the Federal Reserve still sees a need to keep anti-inflationary measures in place to combat inflation in food and energy. Consumers experience this type of inflation directly the most.
Biden, a Wall Street Man
The president talks about the middle class; however, a closer look shows that Wall Street stands firmly behind him and that he’s as much of a creature of Wall Street as anyone he criticizes.
Last month, he held fundraisers with Wall Street power brokers in a bid to keep them behind his campaign in 2024.
“The reason I’m standing here is in large part because of you all,” Biden told the Wall Street crowd who attended a fundraiser overlooking Central Park according to the Associated Press.
Biden economic booster Morgan Stanley donates 60% to Democrats, OpenSecrets notes.
By contrast, his likely opponent, former President Donald Trump, has been buoyed by millions of smaller donors.
“Bidenomics will make a few fat cats happy, but the result will be higher prices, slower growth, and fewer jobs. The rest of us will be left with a sour taste in our mouths, slimmer pocketbooks, and heightened worries for the future,” DeRugy said.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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