Biden Admits Prices Are 'Too High for Too Many Things,' But Points the Blame Away from Himself
When a man who has spent his adult life getting a government check starts telling Americans how they should run their businesses, the country should take it for what it’s worth.
But that’s exactly what President Joe Biden was doing when he used a White House address to grudgingly admit the inflation that’s ravaging American consumers.
And then quickly placed the blame exactly where it doesn’t belong.
In the speech, which introduced yet another government measure to control the economy — this one laughably titled the “White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience,” Biden as much as said the prices Americans are paying for goods and services are too high, but he had only one culprit in mind — the one that Democrats turn to whenever they need a whipping boy.
“Let me be clear: To any corporation that has not brought their prices back down — even as inflation has come down, even as supply chains have been rebuilt — it’s time to stop the price gouging, giving the American consumer a break,” the president said.
.@POTUS: “To any corporation that has not brought their prices back down, even as inflation has come down, even as supply chains have been rebuilt – it’s time to stop the price gouging.”
President Biden on Monday afternoon announced new efforts to strengthen America’s supply… pic.twitter.com/0MPY8SBkTa
— The Hill (@thehill) November 27, 2023
In this case, it would be nice if Biden took his own advice and gave the American people a break from the Democratic boilerplate blame game that puts all the evils of the world on the shoulders of shadowy, unnamed “corporations.”
Considering that Biden’s 36 years in the Senate, eight as vice president and almost three as president amount to almost a decade longer than the almost 40 years the average American has been alive, the statement is a joke.
His career hasn’t been defined by taking risks with his own money, making his own payroll and producing either a good or a service that consumers would want to spend their own money on.
He’s been concerned with spending other people’s money, collected by the government for the Beltway elite to dispose of.
(Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is cut from the same cloth. After entering the New York State Assembly just out of law school, he was elected to Congress in 1980 at the age of 29. These are not men who deal with the world outside of government.)
What’s more, as energy analyst Patrick de Haan pointed out in a social media post, Biden made the claim after rattling off a series of statistics he said showed the economy is improving for Americans, including wage growth.
Biden loves to pretend he’s a friend of the working American — supporting union wage demands with knee-jerk, photo-op reflexes, for instance — but he can’t acknowledge that there’s a connection between higher wages paid to employees and higher prices paid by customers. Effectively, he was claiming credit for the development and dodging responsibility for what followed.
“Cheerlead massive union (and other) wage increases, but target companies when they have to pay the bill for them?” de Haan wrote.
Cheerlead massive union (and other) wage increases, but target companies when they have to pay the bill for them?
‘Stop the price-gouging’: Biden hits corporations over high consumer costs @CNBC https://t.co/KFfamRd4JH
— Patrick De Haan ️ (@GasBuddyGuy) November 28, 2023
Biden also fails to acknowledge that the American business world is not made up of the big names that get the big headlines — GM and Ford, Walmart or Target or Amazon.
According to the Census Bureau, more than half of U.S. businesses as of 2018 had fewer than five employees. Are they the ones gouging American buyers?
Biden’s argument — such as it is — falls apart completely when a quick glance at the history of the past three years shows that the inflation that’s crushing Americans didn’t start until the Joe Biden presidency — and its gargantuan spending spree in the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” and the $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
Did the trauma of COVID-19 disrupt the economy and produce cost fluctuations and inflation? Of course.
But capitalist economies have a way of working themselves out, since they’re based on the rational decisions of countless millions of buyers and sellers.
Socialist economies, under the heavy hands of doofuses like Biden, Schumer and the rest of the Democratic contingent in D.C., have a tendency not to work themselves out — because they’re based on the irrational, politically driven decisions of a handful of doofuses like Biden and Schumer (and Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Hakeem Jeffries, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest).
If corporate “price gouging” is the argument Biden wants to run on in 2024, he’s more than welcome.
Is every corporation doing business in the United States as pure as the driven snow?
Of course not. But making a payroll, paying taxes and undertaking market risks has a tendency to focus the mind on the bottom line — and that has a tendency of lowering prices. In a free economy, consumers look for the best buy. The most successful company provides it.
But Biden and the modern Democratic Party are all in on a government takeover of the greatest economy the world has ever known — it’s what the Green New Deal was all about.
And that’s what Joe Biden is doing, with his constant interference in the economy symbolized by the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience.
Does one American with the ability to fog a mirror seriously think any White House, much less the ideological clown show of the Biden White House and the arrogantly inept Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, will do one thing to improve any element of the American economy without doing more damage elsewhere?
After three years of Biden, the answer is obvious. And when a man who’s spent his entire adult life collecting a government check for deciding how to spend other people’s money starts telling Americans how they should run their businesses, the country should take it for what it’s worth.
And in this case, it’s not worth one damn thing.
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