Post # 353, Bob McKnight's Florida Commentary
The Shopper knew a carton of eggs cost $1.99 four years ago. Now they cost $6.75 for a carton. That is an inflation rate of 339%.
In my previous post, I opined why Republicans won the election--primarily the economy and immigration. Looking deeper into the economy reveals clear decisions made by the Biden Administration that backfired and caused the inflation that won the election for Trump.
The economy at the start of the Biden Administration, 2020.
COVID was still a major medical and economic concern. With the country and the world closed down, the U.S. Congress passed a massive $900 Billion Covid relief bill (without any Republican support). Biden didn't take into account the time it would take to get the funds into rank-and-file American hands. The President was also deeply influenced by the fact that Trump had not passed the trillion-dollar Infrastructure Bill, which might be history-making if Biden could pass it. He did by a couple of votes, and with that legislation passing, America was awash in spending.
One problem that was growing was logistics. Shipments of products and goods were being stalled at ports worldwide, especially in the U.S. The primary cause was the shutdown from Covid, but also unanticipated additional spending of trillions of dollars. With no supplies, products became scarce, and prices started crawling up.
Trump and the Republicans saw the development and with Madison Avenue's help began to develop messaging--Biden and the Democrats are driving up your prices. They captured it brilliantly in a simple picture--that of an egg. It turned out that eggs were directly hit by increased costs because of supplies but also the egg flu.
Biden misread the messaging, thinking that the clear indicator to the public was gas prices, which were doubling. He released oil reserves and quietly authorized additional drilling to get gas prices down. But there was just too much-stalled supply to work through such massive numbers.
The Economy at the End of the Biden Administration, 2024
Biden felt he had weathered the "Broken Economy" tag of his Administration. Inflation was finally under control. Interest rates had come down. Americans were working again, and the stock market was encouraging. But now immigration was a crisis, there were court decisions on abortion, and we were involved in two major wars. Biden couldn't compete with a master communicator like Trump.
But most importantly, inflation is like toothpaste out of the tube, you can't get it back.
With his million-dollar communication budget, Trump highlighted what was eaten at every breakfast table in America--the egg. People remember grocery bills in double digits, that were now still in triple digits. Cars, appliances, and college tuition had all skyrocketed and not come down. The severity of inflation just could not come down fast enough, with Trump's powerful messaging, "Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?"
Eggs were up 339%.
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