Sometimes politics is nothing more than marketing. For evidence, look at the sudden use of the term "bidenomics" by Democrats to describe government policy in recent years. In fact, the so-called "new" is nothing but the same old program with big spend, big rules, and big friends. The only difference is on a much larger scale.
Administration would need all the marketing to sell these ideas, especially to the public that gave them approval ratings in 1930. But no amount of marketing effort can distract us from the economic realities of the past two years.
Start with the Bidenomics feature: Expense Log. The president claims to have cut the deficit, but his allies in the united Democratic Congress have approved $5 trillion in new spending over a decade. Instead of participating in the politically unpopular attempt to pay with new taxes and spending subsidies, they transfer most of it to Uncle Sam's credit card the old-fashioned way. As a result, the annual budget deficit will increase to around USD 3 trillion over the next ten years. To illustrate, remember that just prior to the pandemic, the annual deficit was about $1 trillion.
This is not a partisan argument. If you look at how spending has evolved under different presidents and congresses, it becomes clear that this has been the case for a long time. Every government and congress irresponsibly spends more than its predecessors, and each paves the way for future generations. These include Republican presidents like Donald Trump and George W. Bush. However, this President has reached new heights with an overblown admission of irresponsibility on his $2 trillion bailout, turning modest post-pandemic inflation into record 40-year inflation.
If Bidenomics is about building a middle class, as the president claims, that's just not enough. Real wages have been falling every month since 2021. Not surprisingly, the war on inflation has pushed up interest rates and mortgage rates, straining the budgets of millions of families.
And while Bidenomics is said to have added an estimated 13.4 million new jobs, that number should be taken with a pinch of salt. Most of it is what David Stockman, one of former President Ronald Reagan's budget managers, called "work born again." That's because they're not really new, just a product of the reopening of the economy after the horrible COVID-19 shutdown. Many of the jobs that remain are being created by the same cash injection that is overheating the economy. Nothing to be proud of.
While few (apart from die-hard ideologues) deny that much of the inflationary boom has been due to overspending by Biden and Congress, some are the result of continued easing of restrictions on the available supply of goods and services. . Take, for example, the government's initial support for COVID-19 restrictions and regulations, as well as its refusal to scrap Trump-era tariffs, which helped keep prices high.
Biden's rollback of Trump's productive regulatory reforms and subsequent introduction of additional regulations added to the high price. These include new environmental standards and additional restrictions on energy supply and healthcare.
The Hoover Institution's Binomics study examines the impact of taxes, regulations and spending. The authors note that "Biden's overarching agenda over the long term will reduce full-time employment per person by 3 percent, capital stock per person by about 15 percent, real GDP per capita by more than 8 percent, and actual consumption per person." " person. sitting at home up 7 percent." Meanwhile, the labor market and employers are being deprived of the extra workers they need to earn more because of a failure to reform immigration reform and deal with the border crisis.
However, there is one area where Bidenomics has been very successful: favoritism. The government's industrial policies aggressively subsidize favored industries like semiconductors and electric cars, protect special consumer responsibility interests through do's and don'ts, and boost the wealth of their fellow unionists. Much of this is happening under the guise of revitalizing manufacturing and long-term investment in sectors vital to our national well-being and, of course, to competing with China. As Andy Kessler of the Wall Street Journal observed, "All that was missing from the 'new Washington Consensus' was a Soviet-style five-year plan."
A bidenomy will make some people happy, but the result will be higher prices, slower growth, and fewer jobs. We will all have sour tastes in our mouths, thinner wallets and greater worries about the future.
