America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Friday, August 13, 2021
BIDENOMICS - THE TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE SUPER RICH, CRIMINALS ON WALL STREET AND THEN JOBS AND HOUSING TO ILLEGALS
While workers increasingly find it more difficult to make ends meet, the wealthiest layers of society continue to amass obscene amounts of wealth. According to a recent Oxfam report, the world’s 2,690 billionaires added around $5.5 trillion to their wealth during the pandemic, bringing their collective net worth to $13.5 trillion, an increase of almost 69 percent. The wealthy have seen their fortunes grow more since March 2020 than in the previous 15 years.
Consumer prices continue to rise, with inflation rate at 13-year high
Rising prices on essential goods and services have erased the meager wage gains American workers have seen since the start of the year, resulting in most Americans earning less than they were before the coronavirus pandemic began.
Trader Robert Arciero works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
The pace of inflation slowed somewhat in July but remained elevated, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. Despite reassurances from the White House and corporate media that the inflation is “transitory,” prices continue to rise rapidly, although at a slightly slower pace than in May and June. Last month’s increase still held inflation rates at a 13-year high.
A major driver of July’s moderation was an easing in the rise of used-car prices, which had been a significant driver of inflation over the past few months. According to the Labor Department, used car prices rose just 0.2 percent from June to July, compared to an earlier month-by-month surge of 10.7 percent in June.
Over the past 12 months, the used car index is still up nearly 42 percent, a gain matched only by gasoline prices. Fuel prices have risen sharply in the past few weeks, reaching a national average of $3.19 as of Thursday, the most expensive average of the year and $1.01 higher than the same time last year.
The Consumer Price Index, used to gauge the average rise in the price of goods, rose by 5.4 percent in the year through June. It’s the second straight month of year-over-year increases at that level, a trend not seen since 2008. According to Labor Department data, prices rose 0.5 percent from June to July, a milder increase than in recent months but enough to outpace recent wage gains and drop real wages by 0.1 percent over the month.
The data marks the latest month rising prices have continued to eclipse wage gains as the cost of groceries, gasoline, hotels, restaurant dinners and other items increased. Much of that gain was driven by price increases in food and fuel. Labor Department statistics show core prices, which excluding more volatile commodities like food and energy, rose 0.3 percent in July from a month earlier after rising 0.9 percent in June. Over the course of the year ending in July, core consumer goods rose an average of 4.3 percent.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures index, which tracks changes in prices for goods and services targeted towards and consumed by individuals, climbed by 3.9 percent through May. Producer price inflation, another metric used to track prices, rose 7.8 percent over the year leading up to July. This exceeded the expectations of economists and marked a record high since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began calculating the index in 2010.
Meanwhile, the cost of dining out jumped 0.8 percent, registering its largest monthly gain since February 1981, the Labor Department reported. Home dining also got costlier, as the price index for food consumed at home like meat, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 0.7 percent. Personal services costs, including the price of haircuts, rose 1.2 percent between June and July for a year-on-year increase of 3.1 percent.
Another worrying trend is rising housing and rent costs. Average housing prices increased another 0.3 percent in July, building on similar gains in previous months. From the same time last year, housing prices have risen by 2.4 percent.
The broad surge in the cost of living points to growing hardship and demonstrates the severe impact inflation is having on the livelihoods of American families, amid the most destructive pandemic in a century.
According to Harvard economist Jason Furman, workers’ compensation rose at a 2.8 percent annual rate from April to June. However, prices rose faster, leaving inflation-adjusted real wages 0.7 percent lower than they were in December 2019 and 2 percent below their pre-pandemic trend. In June, economic historian Dr. Tyler Goodspeed calculated that real wages have declined every month in the last year, due to the significant month-over-month increases in overall prices.
While workers increasingly find it more difficult to make ends meet, the wealthiest layers of society continue to amass obscene amounts of wealth. According to a recent Oxfam report, the world’s 2,690 billionaires added around $5.5 trillion to their wealth during the pandemic, bringing their collective net worth to $13.5 trillion, an increase of almost 69 percent. The wealthy have seen their fortunes grow more since March 2020 than in the previous 15 years.
Much of this growth was fueled by the injection of trillions into the financial markets, on a much larger scale than was carried out in the 2008–09 bailout. Since the beginning of the pandemic, capitalist governments around the world have subordinated societal health to the pursuit of profit.
The Biden administration has demanded the reopening of schools, even as the Delta variant of the coronavirus spreads rapidly, so parents can continue to produce profits for the capitalist class. Meanwhile, workers are faced with an increasingly desperate situation. The Century Foundation estimates roughly 7.5 million workers who’ve relied on pandemic-era unemployment benefits will be cut off from jobless aid altogether when these benefits expire on September 6.
Consumer Sentiment Crashes to Lowest Level in 10 Years
The confidence of Americans in the economy suffered an unexpected severe collapse in the first weeks of August.
The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment index fell to 70.2 from the end of July score of 81.2, the lowest score since 2011.
“Consumers reported a stunning loss of confidence in the first half of August,” said Richard Curtin, the survey’s chief economist.
The score was lower than the 71.8 hit at the depths of the pandemic lockdown in April 2020.
The expectations component of the survey fell to 65.2 from 79. The current conditions component fell from 84.5 to 77.9.
“Over the past half century, the Sentiment Index has only recorded larger losses in six other surveys, all connected to sudden negative changes in the economy: the only larger declines in the Sentiment Index occurred during the economy’s shutdown in April 2020 (-19.4%) and at the depths of the Great Recession in October 2008 (-18.1%),” Curtin explained in a statement.
The loss of confidence was “widespread across income, age, and education subgroups and observed across all regions. Moreover, the loses covered all aspects of the economy, from personal finances to prospects for the economy, including inflation and unemployment,” Curtin said.
Medium term inflation expectations got worse in August, with the public expecting three percent inflation, above the 2.8 percent in July. One-year inflation expectations came in at 4.6 percent, one-tenth of a point below July’s figure, which was the highest in 12 years.
Curtin blamed the swift decline on the public’s reaction to the Delta variant.
“There is little doubt that the pandemic’s resurgence due to the Delta variant has been met with a mixture of reason and emotion,” Curtin said. “Consumers have correctly reasoned that the economy’s performance will be diminished over the next several months, but the extraordinary surge in negative economic assessments also reflects an emotional response, mainly from dashed hopes that the pandemic would soon end.”
Others pointed at the persistently higher than expected inflation data as the likely cause of the crash in sentiment.
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