Bernie Sanders and the Inflation Blame Game

Voters may not be in a mood to accept any excuses for Washington-made price hikes, making this a frightful season for the party in charge.

The Journal’s Alyssa Lukpat reports:

Soaring inflation has already strained home buyers, drivers at the gas pump and people buying plane tickets.

Now it’s coming for shoppers in the Halloween candy aisle, too.

Candy prices are up more than 13% from a year ago, according to the Labor Department, the largest-ever yearly jump for candy. Surging labor costs and skyrocketing flour and sugar prices have helped fuel the increase, candy makers say.

Customers say they have been experiencing sticker shock in the candy aisle this month as they reckon with an unfamiliar question: Do they overspend on sweets or leave empty-handed, forgoing the Halloween fun?

Unwilling to be held accountable for the spending bills he helped enact, Mr. Sanders is instead blaming the heirs to a candy fortune. Ms. Lupkat reports:

Rising candy prices have even drawn the attention of some politicians. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) last week tweeted about the rising cost of candy and compared it to the rising wealth of the Mars family, which he said increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many wealthy Americans got even richer in 2020 and 2021 largely because of soaring stock prices.

Mr. Sanders might have figured he could tweet economically nonsensical cheap shots without facing any public backlash—at least until Elon Musk shows up to retire some of Twitter’s content moderators. But even at pre-Musk Twitter, the reaction to the Sandernista message on social media has been swift.

Many Twitter users clearly don’t think much of class-war rhetoric coming from “so-called socialists who own three homes.” A number of commenters are publicly wondering how Mr. Sanders became wealthy on a Senate salary. Others are pointing out the broad inflation that can be found far beyond the candy aisle—and they’re blaming Washington spending. A few suggested that candy makers are run more sensibly and inexpensively than Mr. Sanders’ beloved government. One Twitter user adds:

Consumers made a choice and someone benefited. Which of these two things do you hate more? The consumer choice, or the fact that someone profited from it?

Another responds:

It’s corporate greed causing inflation, not the $5 trillion the central bank created out of thin air. Sure, bro.

Mr. Sanders is adding Big Candy to the list of Democrats’ imaginary inflation villains. The list already includes Big Beef, Big Turkey, Big Oil, and Little Gasoline, among others. It’s almost as if, by an amazing coincidence, businesspeople selling all the stuff people want to buy suddenly became more greedy at the exact same time.

Hold on, now it seems we have another group of people—call them Big and Little Commercial Real Estate—who may have suddenly became more greedy during the Biden era. The Journal’s Will Parker explains how Americans are responding to soaring rents:

Some are choosing to take on roommates, while others are boarding with family or friends. More people are opting to stay longer in their parents homes’ or moving back in, rather than pay the steep rent increases many are experiencing, according to a recent UBS survey.

Shonda Austin, a home healthcare worker, and her three children moved into her mother’s house in Flint, Mich., this month after facing a 24% rent increase in Las Vegas. She hopes to return to a home of her own by March to somewhere more affordable, such as Arkansas or North Carolina, where she could potentially buy.

“My goal is to just save as much as I can,” Ms. Austin said.

It’s a great goal but it’s become so much harder after Messrs. Biden and Sanders sent demand soaring with federal spending while simultaneously discouraging for-profit businesses from expanding supply. There are too many of those dollars created by our central bank, the Federal Reserve, chasing too few apartments, gallons of gasoline and bags of candy.

Perhaps Twitter users can help the Vermont senator grasp the concept of inflation by using simple examples involving things that Mr. Sanders enjoys buying, like houses and mutual fund shares.

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Speaking of Government Disasters
A Journal editorial describes a tragic legacy of lockdowns, reported in the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress:

The 2022 NAEP test, often called the nation’s report card, found a record drop in learning across the U.S. since the last test in 2019. The tests measured proficiency in math and reading for fourth and eighth graders, and the harm from closed schools and online-only instruction is severe and depressing.

America’s schools weren’t doing all that well before the pandemic, but the lack of in-school learning made them worse. Eighth graders lost eight points on math since 2019, falling to an average 274 out of a possible 500. Fourth graders lost five points to an average of 236 in 2022. Not a single state or large school district showed better math performance.

The news is little better on reading, with the average score for fourth and eighth graders dropping by three points. Nationwide only 33% of fourth graders and 31% of eighth graders read at or above grade proficiency.

Then there are the few islands of relative success, as the editorial notes:

Catholic schools tended to stay open during the pandemic, and on average their fourth and eighth graders scored higher in reading and math than public-school students. Department of Defense schools performed even better.

Karen Jowers reports for Military Times:

The military’s school system, which continued to focus on in-person learning while navigating the worldwide Covid pandemic, now leads the nation in reading and math scores for 4th and 8th graders.

The average scores of students in Department of Defense Education Activity schools ranged from 15 to 23 points higher than all national average scores on the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading and math assessments. Their scores either increased or held steady even as the scores of their public school counterparts across the U.S. decreased from 2019 pre-pandemic levels.

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

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(Lisa Rossi helps compile Best of the Web.)