President Joe Biden, both on the campaign trail and since taking office, has repeatedly vowed that he would not raise taxes even a single penny on Americans earning less than $400,000 annually.
Yet, while taxes haven’t been formally increased on middle- and working-class families, Biden’s policies have wrought surging inflation of prices on just about everything that effectively serves as an increased tax on nearly everybody, according to a new report.
Now, as virtually all Americans are forced to spend more than they did before on all sorts of goods and services, the Biden White House is in a panicked scramble to distance itself from the economic problems it has created or exacerbated.
Inflation hits consumers
A mid-October report from NBC News noted that inflation had pushed prices up across the board by an average of 5.4% over a year ago in September — a fact that anybody who has recently shopped for groceries can attest to.
That report pointed to supply chain bottlenecks and increased consumer demand for the surging costs in a wide variety of goods and services, and while that is certainly a substantial factor, left unmentioned in the report is the underlying impact of the Federal Reserve printing — and the Democrat-controlled Congress spending — trillions of new dollars that have weakened the value of the U.S. dollar overall.
Furthermore, though the Biden administration had initially attempted to assure Americans that the inflation they were witnessing was a “transitory” issue that would be worked out by the end of summer, economists now predict that price inflation could continue to be a problem well into 2022, if not longer.
Gas prices soar
One place where Biden’s inflation has really impacted poor and working-class Americans the most is at the gas pump, and a CNBC report from early August noted that gas prices are the highest they have been since 2014, with a national average at that time of $3.22.
That is approximately one dollar more than what Americans were paying for a gallon of gas just one year ago, and there is little hope of relief.
The CNBC report pointed to supply chain disruptions and increased demand that stemmed from the pandemic-related slowdowns of 2020, along with severe weather, like hurricanes, that temporarily halted production in some locales, but, again, that isn’t the entire story.
Left unmentioned, once more, is the effect of inflation on a barrel of oil, but arguably even more impactful than that are Biden’s policies that have effectively throttled U.S. domestic energy production and forced the nation to rely more upon foreign producers who have not increased their levels of production, meaning less supply amid increased demand.
Housing prices up
Then, there is the red-hot housing market, where MarketWatch reported in late September that average home prices across the nation had hit record highs and showed no signs of cooling down so long as interest rates remained low.
While that may be good for Americans who already own a home and are enjoying seeing the value of their asset increase, it is causing significant financial pain for first-time homebuyers and renters who are forced to pay, in some cases, exorbitant and inflated prices and higher rents to get a roof over their heads in Biden’s America.
The post Biden’s inflation undermines promise to not raise taxes on poor and working-class Americans first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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