Newsweek talks to experts who say the Biden economy is doing well, much better than other Western economies.
"I think contraction of luxury goods/services spending is probably more an indicator."
That's already happening, sort of. When you're poor, McDonald's and Starbucks and KFC are luxury items. All missed their earnings targets for Q1. www.cnbc.com
It's funny because for years Millennials have been told they can afford a home if they just dial back the Starbucks. Then it happens and they still can't afford a home.
I read food stamps went up 12.5% in 2024.
It's a fact that food stamps drive up the cost of food for those who have to work for everything.
Food stamp benefits to those eligible INCREASED a maximum $31 per recipient per month to make up for inflation, which works out to the 12.5% you mention. However, that increase was based on multiple years of inflationary growth, not just one.
Food stamps have ZERO influence on the price of food unless one believes that allowing American families to purchase food for sustenance with money provided through their governments is inflationary in and of itself. I'd like to see precisely how you justify such an idiotic statement with anything that supports your asinine assertion.
A sane person might believe that feeding the hungry is a proper role of government especially since each and every living person inside the USA pays taxes as a matter of their existence due to the wide variety of taxation which is omnipresent.
Credit card debt keeps breaking new records while savings continues to plummet.
At the end of 2023, the average credit card debt per borrower was $6,360, or about 10% higher than the year before"ushering in an all-time high.[1]
www.forbes.com
Capitalism is designed to make the rich get richer.
#28 | POSTED BY SNOOFY
It seems to make everyone richer.
Just look at the world poverty rate as capitalism is adopted around the globe.
You're just made most US citizens got screwed in the process.
The issue is the US government elites sold the bottom half of Americans out to accomplish this.
But kept the money printing machine going in high gear, mass immigration , exporting most of its inflation, making citizens feel a little richer. But now the flesh must be paid.
It had to be done don't you know, the good of the many out weigh the good of the few.
"When you're in a hole, stop digging. Most Americans know this. Yet we continue to spend like money is free and endless. We're sponsoring wars and immigration that we can't afford. People see this. People feel this in their wallet."
They will feel it even more if Trump gets elected, because Trump and the GOP plan to cut social security and Medicare and a bunch of other programs that help ordinary people all so they can extend their tax cuts to the wealthy and increase the deficit in the process:
Permanently Extending the Trump Tax Cuts Would Cost $4 Trillion Over the Next Decade
Permanently extending the Trump tax cuts would cost $400 billion per year and give the largest tax cut to extremely rich households.
www.americanprogress.org
Winning!
It's greedflation, stupid
And oil price fixing led by an American Permian Basin company's former CEO:
Big Oil's Un-American Scheme to Price-Gouge ConsumersHaven't MAGAts been screaming about gas prices ever since Trump left office? High gas prices are one of, if not the single biggest influence on inflation since energy costs permeate completely throughout the production/distribution/consumption economy.
A bombshell complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week reveals that Scott Sheffield, the former CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources - one of the largest oil producers in the Permian Basin - colluded with OPEC officials in an attempt to artificially limit supply and jack up prices.
The FTC's complaint alleges that Sheffield exchanged private WhatsApp messages with leaders at OPEC, assuring them that Pioneer and other Permian companies would pump the brakes on output in order to keep prices high. He even threatened to "punish" any companies that dared to ramp up production.
And now we learn who's behind those high prices: American grifters, just like the head MAGA himself.
Regarding the 2021 change, emphasis mine:
President Joe Biden's administration has approved a significant and permanent increase in the levels of food aid available to needy families " the largest single increase in the program's history.www.king5.com
Starting in October, average benefits for food stamps " officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP " will rise more than 25 percent above pre-pandemic levels. The increased assistance will be available indefinitely to all 42 million SNAP beneficiaries.
The increase coincides with the end of a 15 percent boost in SNAP benefits that was ordered as a pandemic protection measure. That benefit expires at the end of September.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that with the change, the U.S. "will do a better job of providing healthy food for low-income families."
The aid boost is being packaged a major revision to the USDA's Thrifty Food Plan, which estimates the cost to purchase groceries for a family of four and guides the way the government calculates benefits. In practical terms, the average monthly per-person benefits for qualified recipients will rise from $121 to $157.
The increase is projected to cost an additional $20 billion per year, but it won't have to be approved by Congress. A farm law passed in 2018 by the then-GOP led Congress and signed by former President Donald Trump already directed the department to reassess the Thrifty Food Plan.
"Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, I think there's a shared understanding of the importance of this program," Vilsack said in a conference call with reporters.
The increase is part of a multi-pronged Biden administration effort to strengthen the country's social safety net. Poverty and food security activists maintain that longstanding inadequacies were laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, presenting an opportunity to make generational improvements that reach beyond the current public health crisis.
The core concept being presented here is increased money in the hands of food purchasers results in the price of food going up. More money chasing the same amount of goods makes the price go up. Pretty much what they teach in Econ 101.
So if we're going to think about inflation this way, then it stands to reason that since 1975, practically all the inflation in food prices is practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.
Compare the gains in income going to the top 20% to the income EBT provides: "In April 2023, the national average benefit was $181.72 per person and $343.00 per household." www.pewresearch.org
Go on, tell me how $343 extra per EBT household can cause in inflation far beyond $343 per household.
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