Explaining & exposing Bidenomics

Joe Biden is attempting to put a positive spin on the term Bidenomics. It isn't working. That's because Bidenomics isn't working. In a major speech in June, 2023, Biden explained Bidenomics by saying "Folks, let me say it as clearly as I can: (The) trickle-down approach failed the middle class and failed America." That's an outright lie. First, Reaganomics poured jet fuel into a double-dip recession. Part of the reason for success was the capital gains tax cuts and immediate expensing for major corporations. Thanks to those things, the Big Three automakers were able to rebuild their plants. Thanks to that, Detroit went from a position where they were constantly losing ground to Japan in terms of market share to outpacing Japan by a significant margin. The biggest winner in that fight? UAW workers, whose job security significantly improved and whose wages rose significantly.

That's Failure?

If that's Biden's definition of failure, let's have lots more of that type of failure. Of course, that isn't the definition of failure so let's define Bidenomics.

First, let's start with this question. If Bidenomics is such a success, why has credit card debt topped $1,000,000,000,000 for the first time? If wages are increasing and inflation is shrinking, why are people borrowing more and borrowing at higher interest rates than in the past 30+ years?

The truth is that wages are rising but they haven't caught up with the inflation we experienced at the start of Biden's administration. The truth is that inflation hasn't stopped. It's just growing at a slower rate. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan, we printed trillions of dollars of funny money just when the economy was starting to take off but before people started returning to work.

Inflation still happens when too many dollars chase too few goods. The American Rescue Plan sent out massive checks and told people they didn't have to return to work, thereby flooding the economy with tons of money and too few workers to produce the goods we needed.

Doug Holtz-Eakins nails it in this interview:

On top of all that, Democrats insisted on increasing unemployment pay, which helped people stay away from work longer. That was just another way to keep labor low while money supplies were kept high through government spending. This administration won't change its habits. Period. Donald Trump is a spendaholic, too, though not at Biden's level. The only way to fix Bidenomics' inflation problem is by electing Gov. DeSantis, maintaining GOP control of the House and flipping control of the Senate from Democrat to Republican. That isn't guaranteed but Biden and Trump are spendaholics. They definitely aren't the solution.

If we don't deregulate industries and give companies an incentive to invest in their companies, inflation will get worse. Further, the policies Biden is pursuing lead to income inequality and, frequently, to inflation.