It’s Friday, May 20th, 2022…but before we begin, Jim Geraghty recently offered a little lesson in ECON 101 which is apparently lost on every Progressive in a position of power:
“What causes inflation? Too much money chasing too few goods. Think back to the old Duck Tales episode. If you had a form of currency that magically replicated itself every few minutes, then not only would you quickly become a millionaire, but everyone else would quickly become a millionaire. And when everyone is a millionaire, the value of a particular dollar or currency declines rapidly. Suddenly, the cost of everything would go up, because the amount of goods — cups of coffee, sandwiches, or gallons of gas — hasn’t increased at the same rate that the amount of money increased. A vendor who kept goods at the pre-inflation price would quickly sell out — and then face trouble when they tried to restock supplies and faced the increased costs of the store’s suppliers, to say nothing of the difficulty to motivating employees to work who suddenly found themselves millionaires, too.
If everyone in town suddenly became a millionaire overnight, it would likely set off a race to see who could purchase the most from the same limited supply of highly desired goods. If you’re a millionaire, you can head over to the nearest Lamborghini dealership and plunk down the $200,000 or so to purchase a new sports car. Lamborghini only makes about 8,400 cars per year. By comparison, Toyota makes more than 9 million cars per year. If everyone in a town became a millionaire, the nearest Lamborghini dealership would sell out quickly — and those last few models would rapidly increase in price, because demand had exploded (from the town’s previously wealthy to now everyone) while the supply had remained the same.
The Biden administration and its like-minded allies are fond of inane arguments that inflation is high because corporations aren’t taxed enough or are greedy. But the thing is, every person and institution who sells you something first has to buy that something from someone else. Let’s say you go to the grocery store to buy orange juice, and it’s more expensive than it was a few months ago. It’s not because the grocery store suddenly became greedy. The grocery store bought it from, say, Tropicana Brands Group. The Tropicana Brands Group buys oranges from roughly 400 Florida orange groves. To grow the oranges, the grove owner and operator purchases fertilizers, as well as water if it isn’t raining enough. The fertilizer company buys phosphates from . . . er, Russian suppliers, and well, that sort of thing got a lot more complicated recently.
Once a particular commonly used good gets more expensive — say, refined fuels, because six oil refineries shut down in 2019 and 2020, as discussed yesterday — then those costs keep getting passed from institution to institution. Your grocer is likely paying more to get the orange juice shipped from Tropicana. Tropicana is paying more to get the oranges transported from the groves to the processing plant. The orange-grove owner is paying more to get his fertilizer brought to his groves. And so on. No one in this process rubbed their hands together, twirled their mustache like Snidely Whiplash, and cackled with glee at the thought of raising prices. In fact, everyone in this process probably worried that their consumers would buy fewer of their products because prices were higher.
This weekend, our Kevin Williamson had a good column in the New York Post laying out that, while Joe Biden didn’t single-handedly create our current high inflation, he significantly exacerbated it by making the wrong decision at just about every step of the way. Kevin wrote that our current mess is “what you get when you combine the wrong monetary policy with the wrong fiscal policy, the wrong trade policy, the wrong regulatory policy, and the wrong energy policy.”
We were probably destined to have supply-chain issues and other economic hiccups as the country emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic. But our government worsened the problem by throwing gobs and gobs of new money into the economy, much faster than the country could produce goods.
…This morning brings word that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s internal polling “finds that in battleground districts, the generic Republican is beating the generic Democrat, 47 percent to 39 percent, according to lawmakers, multiple party officials and the DCCC.” That is a formula for not just getting wiped out in the battleground districts, but probably seeing at least one seemingly safe House Democratic incumbent ousted in some D+5 or D+6 district.“
It’s the same with mandating a minimum wage at any level, as the costs will eventually be passed through to consumers in the form of higher prices for goods and services.
And let’s not forget it was the government’s utterly unnecessary and completely counterproductive lockdown mandates which created the “supply-chain issues and other economic hiccups” in the first place!
“On Friday, President Biden’s Twitter account produced this specimen:
It’s phrased as a question-and-answer, but the answer is not in any way related to the question. Raising the corporate-income tax (presumably the policy on offer) is not a way to bring down inflation.
But there it is, on the president’s Twitter account.Presumably, it reflects a view that the president holds. Since it is utter nonsense, and the entire world saw it, one would think the White House would be prepared to answer questions about it.
One would think.
Today, in the first press briefing since that tweet went up, Peter Doocy of Fox News read the tweet and asked the most straightforward question possible: “How does raising taxes on corporations reduce inflation?” There’s only one correct answer to this question: “It doesn’t.” But the press secretary is not in the business of giving correct answers. The press secretary’s job is to give politically advantageous answers, which often bear little resemblance to correct answers.
Here’s the answer that press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave to Doocy’s question:
Watch what happens when Peter Doocy asks the new White House press secretary how raising taxes on the rich brings down inflation, as Biden tweeted last week.
Jean-Pierre was clearly caught off guard by the question. You can tell because she hesitated and asked, “Are you talking about a specific tweet?” immediately after Doocy read, verbatim, a specific tweet.
The stalling didn’t lead to a better answer, though. It seems Jean-Pierre’s mental calculation went as follows: There’s no possible way to defend this entire tweet, so I’ll just defend the half that’s more politically popular, which is taxing the wealthy.
Of course, that doesn’t answer Doocy’s question, so he asked it again.
At this point, Jean-Pierre resorted to simply reading off the piece of paper in front of her, which mentioned something about climate change (totally unrelated). Whatever came next on the sheet was actually about taxes, but she read “change” when she meant “charge,” an honest mistake when you’re glancing at a piece of paper and reading it aloud for the first time as you kick yourself because your one job is to not let Peter Doocy catch you off guard and the rest of the press corps will love and adore you no matter what.
After some rambling about collective bargaining (this was apparently a wide-ranging list of talking points she was reading from) she brings it home by saying that it’s not fair for manufacturing workers or cops to pay more in taxes than wealthy people. (Note that cops are back in the “good” column for Democrats, alongside the sainted manufacturing workers; “defund the police” no more.) So she stuck the landing, back on a reliable Democratic talking point (which isn’t true, but at least is recognizable), even though it had nothing to do with inflation.
Defending this administration’s record is not an easy job, but it’s now Jean-Pierre’s job. (Jen Psaki has to be feeling good — she’s out before the midterms, and MSNBC pays a whole lot more than government work.) The administration could make Jean-Pierre’s job a lot easier by not stringing together economic nonsense and posting it under the president’s name for the entire world to read.“
Biden’s total tone-deafness reminds us of the scene in Hoosiers where Gene Hackman effectively fires Chelcie Ross, one of the great character actors of our time:
Ever since he took office, Joe Biden has been naked and barking at the moon in living rooms across the country and around the world. Hopefully, come January 3rd, immediately upon assuming control of Congress Republicans will deal with the problem.
Speaking of craziness, whether deliberate or unintentional, writing at The Blade of Perseus, the great VDH asks and answers…
“If an administration deliberately wished to cause havoc on the border, to ensure fuel was nearly unaffordable, to create a crime wave, to spark 1970s hyperinflation, and to rekindle racial tensions, what would it have done differently than what Joe Biden has done?
So is Biden malicious, incompetent, or a wannabe left-wing ideologue?
When pressed about inflation and fuel price hikes, Biden either blames someone or something else, gets mad at the questioner, or claims Donald Trump did it. His administration apparently believes things are going well and according to plan.
When polls disagree, his team either believes the American people are brainwashed or that they themselves have not supplied sufficient propaganda.So they never pivot or compromise, but rededicate themselves to continued failure.
Why?Apparently, what most in the country see as disasters, Biden envisions as success.
…The public believes the Biden Administration has failed America, with disastrous results due either to its incompetence, belligerence, or left-wing zealotry.But Biden and his delusional team seem delighted with what they have wrought.In sum, what Americans see as an abject catastrophe, they cheer on as a stunning and planned success.“
“The bill allows private citizens to bring civil lawsuits for monetary damages against anyone who performs or aids an abortion. The law sets minimum damages at $10,000, plus legal costs. It provides an exception for a medical emergency or if the pregnancy is the result of rape, sexual assault or incest that has been reported to law enforcement.“
Meaning Okies determined to rid themselves of their unborn baby need only travel to another of the 50 states to do the deed…which, in our opinion, really isn’t much to ask of someone intent on committing infanticide.
…and said he “wanted to commit a murder-suicide”. Yeah,…THAT oughta work!!!
It’s now become clear not only did New York law enforcement and mental health bureaucrats drop the ball, but the manager of the Tops store as well. How DID you all miss this?!?
…White Supremacist! We won’t hold our breath waiting for the good Congresswoman to correct the record.
Magoo
Video of the Day
This video from The Nickel demonstrates the new White House propagandist has one answer to all the problems plaguing the country. See if you can predict what it is!
Tales of The Darkside
John Stossel gives us the lowdown on the record-high cost of gasoline. SPOILER ALERT: It has little or nothing to do with Vladimir Putin.
On the Lighter Side
Watch as Dubya commits one of the greatest Freudian slips of all time.
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