Like a thief in the night, inflation has been robbing Americans blind for the last 2½ years.
Prices have risen so much faster than wages that people are demonstrably poorer today than when the president took office. Although a typical family’s weekly paycheck is about $230 bigger, it buys about $100 less. It’s the same as if that family had its annual income reduced by roughly $5,200. But the shocking scope of the inflation problem doesn’t end there. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently published data showing net household wealth hit a record high in the second quarter of this year. But those figures aren’t adjusted for inflation, which has robbed Americans of trillions in wealth.
Despite Americans’ obvious financial pain, the Biden administration seems content to cherry-pick politically profitable data points from these reports. The White House crowed that the three-month average of core inflation was at the lowest level in two years. That’s true, but it ignores just about everything else moving in the wrong direction.