Posted on February
15, 2022
Cold-Blooded Biden
Empathy, not inflation, is transitory
by
Daniel
Clark
Since the beginning of last summer, National Economic
Council director Brian Deese has led the Biden administration's efforts to
dismiss our rapidly rising inflation rate as "transitory," which is really just
a pointy-headed way of saying ignore the problem, and it'll go away. President Biden himself has instead referred
to the problem as "temporary," which is presumably a translation of
"transitory" into no-malarkey, so that all his fellow Amtrak-riding working
stiffs can understand. (Has he ever
actually checked the prices of Amtrak tickets?)
The two words are roughly synonymous, except that the
duration of something that's temporary is open-ended, whereas "transitory" is
more restrictively defined as being "of brief duration." The president's semantic shift seems to
acknowledge the fact that America's inflation problem is not going to cure
itself anytime soon, yet he dismisses it all the same. It's not hard to understand why. When your agenda consists of frivolously
spending trillions upon trillions of dollars that don't yet exist, the last
thing you can afford to do is concede that something must be done to curb
inflation.
As
if in competition for the most absurd denial of reality on the subject, Jason
Furman, former economic adviser to President Obama, tweeted, "Most of the
economic problems we're facing (inflation, supply chains, etc.) are high class
problems," a statement that was enthusiastically endorsed by Biden chief of
staff Ronald Klain. In an interview with
Bill Hemmer on Fox News, Furman defended his claim by saying, "The reason we
have this inflation is actually a good reason: that the unemployment rate has
come down, that families got money, and people are buying more things than ever
before. The problem isn't that the ports
stopped working, it's that people are buying so much stuff that so much is
trying to come through our ports right now."
So all you oafs and serfs out there in middle America have no reason to
complain about a 7.5 percent inflation rate, because it has all been caused by
your own conspicuous consumption. The
truth be known, you've never had it so good.
It
should come as no surprise that Furman was the chairman of the Obama-Biden
administration's Council of Economic Advisers, because his remarks are as out
of touch as most of the Democrats' attempts to connect with those they perceive
as the common folk. It was at a 2008 campaign
stop in Iowa that candidate Barack Obama, his fingers ever on the pulse of the
nation, asked, "Anybody gone into the Whole Foods lately and see what they
charge for arugula?" But of course. That's the first thing most Iowans do, after
taking the Amtrak home from work. They
hop in their electric cars and make a beeline for Whole Foods to stock up on
arugula, soy milk, and roasted crickets.
That kind of detachment should have been expected from
Obama, but Biden, who made "empathy" the cornerstone of his presidential
campaign, ought to know better. Then again,
if he did, he would never have gone along with Obama's callous economic policies. When Biden was vice president, his boss
coldly informed us that if he could implement his cap-and-trade system of
punishing energy producers for CO2 emissions, "electricity rates would necessarily
skyrocket." Obama's response to rising
oil prices was to lecture Americans on the importance of keeping their tires
properly inflated. He shrugged off
alarming unemployment rates by blaming them on airport kiosks and ATMs. Where was his right-hand man, Mr. Empathy, to
set him straight?
As president, Biden has accelerated Obama's attempts
to spur economic growth through previously unimaginable amounts of deficit
spending, because the government's needs, unlike yours, must be addressed
immediately. The executive branch might
be down to its last handful of economic councils, for instance. Anybody who can tell the difference between
his wife and his sister ought to know that putting vast amounts of new money
into circulation is bound to be inflationary.
Joe Biden knows, too. It's just
that he doesn't care.
Sure, the inflation rate is the highest it's been in
four decades, but it's not as if it really affects you non-high class
people. Besides, you've caused it to
happen with your big-spending materialistic obsessions, like buying food and gasoline,
and heating your homes. If only you were
able to exercise a little more self-control, like your superiors in
Washington. Still, it's only
temporary. Pretty soon, you and your
insufficiently inflated tires will be driving over to Des Moines for the state
arugula festival, and living it up, as usual.
The Shinbone: The
Frontier of the Free Press