We got the latest inflation report yesterday, and the corporate news media is pushing the headline that it came in a bit tamer than expected in May—like it was a big deal and good news.
That’s technically true, but it only means that prices are still getting worse, just at a slower pace.
In other words, inflation is still a serious problem for most Americans, and it is hurting many people.
This is especially true when it comes to the most essential items. For example, we’re spending more on food than ever in U.S. history.
Meanwhile, gas prices have been stuck well over $3 a gallon for over a year.
And here’s the kicker: the government doesn’t even count food and energy prices when calculating the inflation rate!
Biden regime economist Austin Goolsbee says these are excluded because they are too variable to be measured accurately.
Well, that’s what they want you to believe. However, the real reason food and energy are stripped out is that it almost always causes the reported overall inflation number to go down. Every president and bureaucrat in power in Washington wants people to think inflation is tame.
And the reason why they want you to think that is because inflation is absolutely the biggest killer for incumbent presidents.
It’s even worse than unemployment because even the rich and employed feel it daily.
Think about it: the last extended period of inflation in this country began roughly in the late 1960s and lasted until 1982. During that period, it helped end four presidencies.
LBJ mostly quit because he failed in Vietnam, but rising prices gave him a two-front war he couldn’t win.
Richard Nixon was mostly felled by Watergate, but if the pain of inflation had not been a fact during those same years, he might have been able to survive.
Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter weren’t re-elected primarily because of the economic woes brought on by inflation.
It was only when inflation subsided under Ronald Reagan in 1983 that the presidential losing streak ended. And you know about the massive re-election victory Reagan won because of it.
How did Reagan end that cycle? He knew that government spending and regulations were the biggest contributors to inflation, so he cut both as soon as he took office, and the rest is history.
Now, by contrast, look at what Biden has done. As soon as he became president, he pushed the biggest new spending bill ever: the $1 trillion “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.”
Then he pushed the “Inflation Reduction Act,” which only added to the spending and did nothing to reduce inflation.
And there has been no reduction in regulations under Biden, and there will not be under any Democrat in office in the foreseeable future.
But inflation has a sneaky way of making other problems worse. There is no better example of that than the open border crisis for which Biden is also responsible.
Think about it: we’ve had massive illegal immigration in this country in many different periods of our recent history. But the Biden open border dwarfs them all.
In less than 3 ½ years, the number of illegal aliens in this country has doubled from about 10 million when Joe Biden took office to about 20 million today!
And one of the reasons why more Americans are angry about this isn’t just because of all the cases of violent crime, drug smuggling, and human trafficking that come along with these massive numbers of illegal immigrants.
It’s also because inflation is one of the biggest arguments people in favor of open borders use all the time. They tell us that more cheap labor from across the border will keep prices low and help the U.S. deal with the shrinking number of native-born Americans who want to work blue-collar or service jobs.
The problem is that illegal immigrants don’t just bring in lower wages for themselves. They also lower wages from everyone else, as Congressman Tom McClintock explained during this exchange with an economist at a Congressional hearing back in February.
The other problem is they tell us that lower wages will at least keep prices down when we go to the store.
But that argument doesn’t hold water when we see those prices going up at a higher rate than we’ve seen in 40 years.
Suddenly, more and more Americans are now asking why this massive flood of illegal immigration isn’t helping reduce inflation like those Washington economists always promise.
When they ask those questions, they also find out about the massive amounts of government spending on all kinds of services for those illegal migrants, including food, housing, and so much more.
And, as Ronald Reagan taught us, more government spending leads to more inflation. Suddenly, voters are more aware than ever of inflation and illegal immigration.
A double-whammy perfect storm for Biden and the Democrats.
You can say the same about how inflation highlights problems in health care, insurance costs, and college tuition. It’s an equal opportunity destroyer.
But it saves its biggest destructive power for the politicians.
That’s a key part of this past weekend’s European Union Parliament elections that everyone is missing.
Sure, the people of Europe are getting more and more frustrated with illegal migrant cases that have been plaguing that continent more drastically than the U.S. for decades now.
But something that Europe is also suffering more from is, you guessed it,
inflation!
You can bet the people of Europe are angrier now than ever at their E.U. representatives’ policies of the past and present because of the bite inflation is putting on them.
Remember, illegal migrant crime and terrorism in Europe have been a fact of life over there since the first few years after 9/11.
But as long as the inflation bug wasn’t biting them that badly, the people never revolted against E.U. leadership like this.
Suddenly, Europe’s voters are revolting against socialism and being labeled as “far right” reactionaries by clueless news media and even more clueless politicians trying to pretend this is some kind of fascist revolt.
In 1992, Bill Clinton’s famous winning phrase was “It’s the economy, stupid.” But it would be really stupid to think that inflation and the economy are the same thing.
Past recessions didn’t produce this kind of crushing defeat for socialist parties in E.U. elections. Inflation and its power to spotlight illegal migration did.
European politicians like French President Emanuel Macron have responded to these E.U. election losses by using the “fascist” slur against the voters. And you can bet that will be the strategy Biden takes as well.
That’s right, prepare to be labeled a fascist by your president simply because you can’t afford groceries, and you have the gall to complain about it loudly!
It will be “fascist” and “MAGA extremism” when you’re complaining about all the money the White House and your local government are spending on illegal migrants to feed and house them. Meanwhile, you can’t make rent or buy name-brand foods.
And to make it all even worse, they’ll attack you for all of this even as they tell you inflation is getting better. It’s all in your head, you see, just fake news.
Well, Mr. Biden, Democrats, good luck with that.