Biden’s Policies On Display At The Pump And On The Shelves

I don’t know much about Christy Kelly, other than she’s a Pepperdine Law grad and a journalist. I follow her on Twitter, or rather X, because her Tweets (or are they Exes now?) are smart.

This one of her most recent messages stopped me. Cynics might say it never happened, or it’s just more humble-bragging. But after more than a decade on the social media platform I can usually smell a phony.

This seemed real. And everyone who isn’t living in some upper middle class cocoon knows it’s not uncommon:

Fact is, Bidenomics is hurting folks who have always been able to take care of their families.

You can see it everywhere. Especially in the grocery store where you can’t walk down any aisle without seeing shoppers staring in disbelief at the prices of staples. Folks setting items aside at checkout as they watch the total on the screen grow.

Despite the non-stop gaslighting by the White House, the fact is that median household incomes - when adjusted for inflation - have fallen in the U.S. for the third straight year, according to The Wall Street Journal:

Surging inflation gobbled up household income gains last year, making 2022 the third straight year in which Americans saw their living standards eroded by rising prices and pandemic disruptions.

Americans’ inflation-adjusted median household income fell to $74,580 in 2022, declining 2.3%  from the 2021 estimate of $76,330, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. The amount has dropped 4.7% since its peak in 2019.

Guess what? Gas prices are a big part of the problem, lending credibility to the scene Ms. Kelly stumbled upon. But with Biden deliberately trying to cripple domestic oil production and Saudis and OPEC cutting oil production, the days of affordable gas are definitely in the rearview.

Consumers whip out credit cards to pay at the pump, so they can get to work, driving up consumer credit. In August, American credit card debt soared to more than $1 trillion. A record. At a time when interest rates were also climbing.

This is ominous.

Worse, our feckless president depleted our Strategic Petroleum Reserves before the midterm elections. He did this in an attempt to artificially lower the price of gas in order to gain a political advantage.

He hasn’t yet replenished them and the reserves remain at a 40-year low, meaning there is no way to help lower prices this time. Oh, and the country is in trouble if there is an international crisis that interrupts the flow of oil from the MidEast. Incidentally, that is why the SPR were created: to protect the flow of fuel in case of a disruption, not to provide political cover for a presidential administration.

Get ready for more pain. The UAW strike is going to raise the cost of both new and used cars unless it wraps quickly, which seems increasingly unlikely.

I saw one of Biden’s economic advisors on TV last week griping that he couldn’t understand why the American public overwhelmingly disapproves of Biden’s handling of the economy when everything is really, really good.

“Because we all go to the supermarket, you fool,” I yelled at the TV.

And the gas station.