by J.T. Young
Democrats’ display their elitism by using macroeconomic numbers to ignore America’s microeconomic concerns. By promoting the macro-economy, Democrats produced the numbers they now campaign on. However, their macro numbers have come with high inflation that has wreaked havoc on the micro-economies in which most Americans live.
Democrats’ embrace of the macro economy is unmistakable. Paul Krugman’s recent column (10/8) trumpeted that the “macro” numbers “vindicate Bidenomics.” During CBS’s Sunday (10/6) 60 Minutes interview, Kamala Harris immediately ducked into the macro economy when asked about inflation’s impact on Americans.
When discussing the economy, Democrats only talk about the macro — GDP and unemployment. When pressed about her economic plans, Harris talks about proposals to pump more federal dollars into plumping up those macroeconomic numbers.
There are real limits to the value of macro numbers. The GDP’s post-COVID rebound in the second half and 2020 and 2021 is a good example. Statistically it showed dramatic growth; in reality, it was a return to normal trajectory. Throughout the next three years, because GDP is merely the total value of all goods and services produced, massive federal spending — $7.7 trillion in deficits during FYs 2021-2024 — boosted that statistic.
However, the biggest limit on Democrats’ macro numbers is that average Americans do not live in them. Instead, most Americans live in the microeconomic: their households, jobs, and workplaces. And they measure their microeconomic worlds at kitchen tables — not by macro statistics, but by a basic micro one: How much does my paycheck bring home?
Into these microeconomic worlds has come Biden-Harris’s record inflation. This is the reason — to the consternation of Democrats staring fixedly at their macro numbers — Americans rate Biden so poorly on inflation in particular and on the economy in general. Real Clear Politics’ averages of national polling show just 36.5% of Americans approve (62.3% disapproving) of Biden’s handling of inflation and just 39.8% approve (58.5% disapproving) of his handling of the economy.
When confronted with their inflation’s effects, Democrats attempt to switch to the macro — as Harris did in her 10/6 CBS 60 Minutes interview. Or they pedantically pretend inflation is over because its rate of increase is finally slowing.
What Democrats avoid talking about are their inflation’s impact on average Americans’ microeconomic worlds. Claiming the inflation rate is now the lowest in four years, ignores these have been their four years — during which inflation leapt, peaking at just over 9% (a four-decade high).
Nor do Democrats say their macro inflation rate number is just a single frame in inflation’s movie. Inflation’s impact is cumulative, compounding everything that came before; that its current rate of increase is lower (though at 2.5 in August, still above the Federal Reserve’s desired 2% rate), does not erase the effects of Biden-Harris’ four-year inflation. If it has been below freezing for four weeks and the temperature then rises five degrees one day, you do not call that summer and put on a bathing suit.
The micro economies most Americans inhabit are hurting. They’ve been hurting over the last four years, and inflation’s compounding impact makes that hurt worst right now — even as Democrats gaze into their macro statistics to tell Americans that everything economic is great.
The prices average Americans pay are high; 20% higher, and some much higher still, than they were four years ago. Their mortgage rates are high — a monthly mortgage on a median-priced home costs $1,250 more now than four years ago — because the Federal Reserve had to raise interest rates to fix the inflation that Biden-Harris’ high spending helped cause. Their savings are depleted because average Americans had to exhaust them to keep pace with Biden-Harris inflation. And their borrowing is high because having exhausted their savings, average Americans are now piling on debt to offset the impact of Biden-Harris’s inflation.
Once upon a time, Democrats campaigned on America’s microeconomics. Biden still styles himself “Lunch Bucket Joe,” while Harris constantly speaks incessantly of growing up in a “middle-class household.” Yet now, they run from the micro and into the macro.
Their only use for microeconomies’ inflation woes was as cover for their macroeconomic plans. Biden himself admitted it about their IRA bill: “The Inflation Reduction Act — I wish I hadn’t called it that, because it has less to do with reducing inflation than it does to do with dealing with providing for alternatives that generate economic growth.” Rather than combatting inflation, it added another $370 billion of the same elitist spending that helped cause the inflation it falsely claimed to cure.
Democrats have enjoyed talking about America being two countries. Now, they have two economies too: the macro one of statistics and the micro one of average Americans. What has changed in both is Democrats’ blatant embrace of the elite. Nothing is more indicative of this than their embrace of the macroeconomy at the expense of average Americans’ micro economies.
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J.T. Young is the author of the upcoming book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, Department of Treasury, and OMB, and representing a Fortune 20 company.
