President Joe Biden took to social media on Super Bowl Sunday in lieu of a traditional TV interview to try to sell the idea that it is evil businesses, not his administration that are to blame for rising consumer costs.
It may go down as the least effective and most misleading ad in the history of America’s biggest football game and televisual event.
Setting aside the laughable optics of an 81-year-old man basically saying, back in my day, ice cream came in bigger packages and only cost a nickel, the real problem here is that Grandpa Joe is straight up lying.
FITNESS GURU JILLIAN MICHAELS TEARS INTO BILL MAHER FOR DOWNPLAYING INFLATION: ‘BUY SOME F—–G EGGS!’
“Shrinkflation,” the president called it, alleging that corporations are swindling consumers with smaller packaging purely for profit and not because his administration has made the cost of everything, for companies and consumers, skyrocket.
President Joe Biden wants to blame everyone else for the failures of his own administration when it comes to the economy. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
What exactly are these businesses supposed to do? Just swallow the cost of Biden’s inflation so that the commander-in-chief doesn’t look bad and wins reelection?
Obviously, cost increases from inflation, taxes or regulation get passed onto the consumer, not for nefarious reasons, but because it is literally how markets work.
And nowhere are the effects of this boom in prices felt more keenly than by middle class consumers trying to afford small luxuries in their lives.
Take fast food. We have all seen the viral social media posts showing receipts for a single McDonald’s meal pushing $20, and while some are exaggerated, they are by no means anecdotal.
VideoLast year, limited-service restaurants saw a 6.2% hike in prices, far outpacing normal inflation, and that is if the places even stay in business.
Just recently, Chipotle announced that customers in California should expect “significant’ price hikes owing to Governor Gavin Newsom’s $20-an-hour minimum wage,
How about that family vacation, so long a staple of the American working class?
While the travel price index was steady from 2022 to 2023, it is up a whopping 19% since 2019, with transportation and lodging both netting double-digit increases.
Shrinking products: Bottles of Gatorade are pictured, left, a 32 fluid ounce and 28 fluid ounce, in Glenside, Pa., Monday, June 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Want to take the kids to a movie? Good luck. Theater ticket prices are also up 20% since 2019 with the average seat coming in at $11, and that doesn’t include rising prices on a bucket of popcorn.
Sorry, Mr. President, airplanes and movie screens aren’t getting smaller, neither are Big Macs, they are just getting more expensive because of the inept economic policies of you and your party.
No serious person believes that suddenly when Biden took office, greedy CEOs twisted their handlebar mustaches and cackled that it was time to start price gouging.
It’s always somebody else’s fault, though. Remember the “Putin Price Hike,” back when Biden blamed Russia and the war in Ukraine for his inflation? We haven’t heard that one in a while, have we?
VideoBiden is fast running out of other people to blame.
But one can see why Joe and his team are pushing these prevarications. Poll after poll shows Americans feel they are worse off after three years of his leadership, and it is largely because so many of the little things now feel out of reach.
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The president talks a great game about the middle class, about his own father’s economic worries when Joey was a kid, but where is his compassion for the single mom who can’t swing pizza night this month, or the dad who has to cancel a vacation.
It turns out he has none, instead he just passes the buck to meanie corporations while asking working Americans for four more years to make the problem worse.
Throughout this election cycle, issues have bobbed up and down in importance to voters, the border, abortion, crime, but one has been a constant: the economy and inflation.
This is because grocery bills and bank statements don’t lie, even when the president of the United States does.
The only things actually shrinking here are Joe Biden’s poll numbers and his chances at serving a second term, and the longer the middle class feels their little luxuries growing out of reach, the smaller and smaller those chances will become.
