A columnist for The Observer apparently didn’t sense the comedic value in telling readers with a straight face that the clownish concept of Bidenomics is somehow finally starting to work.
Columnist Will Hutton’s Dec. 17 headline was just ludicrous: “With Bidenomics beginning to pay off, Keir Starmer needs to keep the faith and lift the gloom.” The leftist writer tried to use Biden’s laundry list of bad economic policies as a template to push for the U.K. Leader of the Opposition in Parliament Keir Starmer and his Labour Party to “stick to its plan for public investment.”
Hutton propagated how “confidence” was supposedly “growing” against the prospects of a recession. He also touted Wall Street’s stock market boom and haphazardly celebrated the low unemployment rate without taking into account the millions out of the workforce. “It is an economy in rude health – with nearly every dial on the economic dashboard flashing green,” he absurdly claimed. Hutton then used an increasingly typical, condescending media talking point to whine how the plebeians just weren’t buying it. “Yet at the same time US consumers are suffused with gloom … What works economically is not working politically.”
In other words, Americans are apparently just dumb for not liking the 17.6 percent price hike wreckage Bidenomics has left in its wake.
Hutton went on to fawn over how the core of U.K.’s Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’s economic policy was “unashamedly rooted in Bidenomics.” Yet, Hutton complained how Biden was “so disliked he is advised never to use the word ‘Bidenomics’ to describe the policies responsible for” the supposed “economic success” he’s pushing for Britain to emulate. To quote ESPN First Take Host Stephen A Smith, “Stay off the weed!”
It’s unclear what “confidence” Hutton is talking about. Several other economists have just recently pointed to the very real threat of recession. Bloomberg economists already noted Dec. 7 that the long-looming “[r]ecession probably began in October.” Economists Steven Hanke and John Greenwood wrote in a Dec. 13 National Review piece that the economy was effectively running on “fumes” based on the drastic drop in the money supply. Both economists analyzed that this all pointed to a recession: “[T]he U.S. economy is on schedule to tank in 2024.”
The Job Creators Network Foundation’s November edition of its Small Business IQ poll of 400 employers found that “overall sentiment” about the economy fell to 51.9, “the lowest level recorded since the survey began in May of 2021.” On the question of whether the cost of doing business has gone down amidst the Biden administration’s touting of the slowing inflation rate, a not-even-close 78 percent of respondents answered emphatically, “No.” In other words, it's not just consumers who think Bidenomics is the pathetic equivalent of snake oil.
But there are other data points that make Hutton’s argument look even more ridiculous. Credit card debt is at a record $1.23 trillion with the interest rates on retail credit also breaking records. Housing is unaffordable “in every major metro across the country except for four,” according to economist EJ Antoni of The Heritage Foundation. Also, there are reportedly between “5 and 8 million people missing from the workforce.” In addition, the average monthly new home payment today is reportedly a whopping $3,322 compared to just $1,787 when Biden first took office.
Seven in 10 Americans are also reportedly living paycheck-to-paycheck. But Bidenomics is beginning to “pay off,” eh Hutton?
Conservatives are under attack. Contact The Guardian at guardian.readers@theguardian.com and demand it stop peddling propagandic takes on Bidenomics.
