The Inflation Election – WSJ

For his next trick, Mr. Biden will now attempt to persuade voters that his historic binge of spending on politically correct infrastructure and inefficient energy production will restrain prices. How much credibility does he carry into this discussion? His Labor department reports that over the 12 months through August, electricity prices have risen by 15.8% while utility (piped) gas service is up a staggering 33%.

Overall inflation is not that bad but it remains historically ugly. The Journal’s Gwynn Guilford reports:

The Labor Department on Tuesday reported its consumer-price index rose 8.3% in August from the same month a year ago, down from 8.5% in July and from 9.1% in June, which was the highest inflation rate in four decades. The CPI measures what consumers pay for goods and services.

So-called core CPI, which excludes often volatile energy and food prices, increased 6.3% in August from a year earlier, up sharply from the 5.9% rate in both June and July—a signal that broad price pressures strengthened.

On a monthly basis, the CPI increased 0.1% in August from July, despite a sharp decline in gasoline prices. The core CPI rose 0.6% in August–double July’s pace.

Mr. Biden’s inflation is making workers poorer. His Labor Department reports:

Real average hourly earnings decreased 2.8 percent, seasonally adjusted, from August 2021 to August 2022. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.6 percent in the average workweek resulted in a 3.4-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period

Heather Long of the Washington Post tweets:

Inflation has been eating up wage gains since April 2021 and shows little sign of significant easing.

Inflation has also been eating up the ability to afford stuff to eat. The Journal’s Gabriel Rubin reports:

Food prices continued their relentless climb in August, according to the Labor Department, with groceries up 0.7% over the prior month and food at dining establishments up 0.9%.

Over the past year, groceries are outpacing overall inflation, rising 13.5%– the fastest pace since March 1979.

“Batten down the hatches,” warns a CNBC headline above a story offering advice for investors looking for stocks that can weather the inflation storm.

Perhaps similar advice might be offered to Democrats running for re-election this fall. In April this column noted:

Inflation is the dominant issue right now for many voters nationwide and is likely to remain so through the November congressional elections. This means that if Democrats want to try to avoid the loss of their majorities they must act quickly to encourage the supply side of the economy, and also need the Federal Reserve to reduce the widespread pain afflicting consumers, savers and businesses. There’s very little time before the political reckoning becomes inevitable.

Thank goodness the Federal Reserve has finally begun to address its most important responsibility. But the president has stubbornly refused to help, accelerating implementation of his poisonous policy mix of federal spending to fuel demand plus heightened tax and regulatory burdens to discourage supply. Too many dollars, not enough productive work.

With food costs continuing to rise, Democrats will be claiming this week that their “Inflation Reduction Act” will live up to its name. But the expensive new law is about funding climate agendas, not meals. Garrett Downs reports for Politico:

Economists are uncertain that the [Inflation Reduction Act] or any of the other provisions will have an effect on rising food costs.

“The majority of those federal programs and funds [in the IRA] are targeted at conservation, you know, potentially increasing conservation efforts around the country,” said

Glynn Tonsor,

an agricultural economics professor at Kansas State University. “That’s not the same as increasing production, and that’s relevant for the food price discussion because I haven’t seen anything that’s really about increasing production volume. [And] that would be one mechanism, obviously, to reduce food prices if we increased the volume produced.”

When Mr. Biden came into office during the first quarter of 2021 the economy was growing at a robust real annual rate of 6.3% while inflation was low. Now inflation rages and GDP has been shrinking for two consecutive quarters. Yet the president seems to be pretending that the disastrous therapy he imposed on the economy will suddenly begin to revive the patient. Last night Mr. Biden tweeted:

Throughout our history, America has often made the greatest progress, coming out of some of our darkest moments. I believe we can, and must, do that again, and we are.

The darkest moments of inflation in four decades have occurred entirely on his watch, and are largely of his own making. Since he still expresses no intention to change course, voters will have to elect a Congress willing to restrain him. Voters may be especially eager to replace Biden allies in jurisdictions where inflation has been highest. Russ Wiles of the Arizona Republic reports:

Americans got a dose of somber inflation news Tuesday, and the results were especially disappointing for metro Phoenix.

The Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale area leads all major cities with a 13% inflation rate over the past 12 months, followed by second-place Atlanta at 11.7% and 11.2% in the area around Tampa, Florida. Miami and Baltimore round out the top five.

This year Democrats are defending Senate seats in Arizona and Georgia, among other places.

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In Other News

Pew Research: Large Majority of Blacks Opposes Defunding Police
Speaking of Georgia, columnist Charles Blow of the

New York Times

has been exploring why black men in the Peach State and elsewhere are not as supportive of the Democratic Party as they used to be. Mr. Blow cites a 2019 quotation from Mondale Robinson, founder of an advocacy group called the Black Male Voter Project:

I wound up doing campaign work for a long time, and one thing I noticed right away was that most of the people who determine what’s said about politics generally, but progressive politics more specifically, are white men. The messaging they convey doesn’t speak to my lived experience as a Black man. It’s not motivating to me or to the brothas I know — uncles, cousins, friends, men like my father.

Mr. Blow also cites recently released findings from the Pew Research Center regarding an October 2021 survey of black Americans. Pew researchers Kiana Cox and Khadijah Edwards report:

Though majorities of Black women (65%) and men (56%) say police brutality is an extremely big problem for Black people living in the U.S. today, Black women are more likely than Black men to hold this view. When it comes to criminal justice, Black women (56%) and men (51%) are about equally likely to share the view that the prison system should be completely rebuilt to ensure fair treatment of Black people. However, Black women (52%) are slightly more likely than Black men (45%) to say this about policing. On the matter of police funding, Black women (39%) are slightly more likely than Black men (31%) to say police funding in their communities should be increased. On the other hand, Black men are more likely than Black women to prefer that funding stay the same (44% vs. 36%). Smaller shares of both Black men (23%) and women (22%) would like to see police funding decreased.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

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