The Bane of Bidenomics
New jobless claims last week rose for the first time in six weeks, in the latest sign that Bidenomics means big trouble. Yet Democrats in Congress are still looking to ram through more of his prescriptions.
Fresh unemployment filings totaled 412,000, up from 375,000 the week before. They’re below the lunatic heights of the early lockdown months, but still far higher than the pre-pandemic level of roughly 200,000 weekly claims.
The US economy wants to roar back: April saw 9.3 million US job openings, a record since the data series began in 2000 and a whopping 1 million higher than the March level. But businesses are struggling to hire, in good part because Biden extended the $300-a-week unemployment “bonus” through Labor Day.
Two-dozen states are starting to opt out of the “bonus,” but not big Democratic ones like California and New York, so the drag will continue there all summer.
Many restaurants can’t operate at full capacity, even though COVID restrictions are finally gone. And manufacturers face the same issue, making it impossible to fulfill demand, creating shortages and pushing up prices.
The Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index jumped 5 percent within a year, from May 2020 to last month, with consumer prices soaring more than they have since just before the 2008 economic meltdown.
That has the Federal Reserve looking at two interest-rate hikes (at least) by the end of 2023, news that led the Dow to plunge 400 points Friday.
But Biden is still pushing to spend trillions of US taxpayer dollars on his various schemes — and drastically hiking taxes on investment and incomes to help pay for them. Worse, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is eyeing unprecedented use of “reconciliation” rules to push Biden’s plans into law despite a total lack of Republican support.
The only thing stopping the US economy from returning to the pre-COVID Trump boom, with solid wage gains for workingclass people of all races, is Biden’s bid to transform the country to match the slowgrowth European model.
Democrats apparently figure the suffering of the last 15 months was good for their electoral fortunes, so they’re doing their best to make the pain eternal.