Biden lied about inflation, middle class soon to be 'collateral damage'
President Joe Biden delivers his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2021
With the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump taking place Thursday night, it is likely that Biden may repeat a falsehood he first told CNN’s Erin Burnett on May 8 – that inflation was 9% when he took office.
Biden repeated this in another interview on May 14, with Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor Brian Sozzi.
However, the truth is that at the time Biden was inaugurated, the year-over-year inflation rate was 1.4%. Supply-chain issues due to the shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in the rapid inflation increase when Biden took office, once demand for materials and goods began to rise. Inflation peaked at 9.06% a year and a half into Biden’s presidency in June 2022.
Studies – as well as the near-universal experience of Americans – show that "the vast majority had their pocketbooks devastated by inflation" during Biden’s presidency.
However, Biden’s proposed U.S. budget for 2025 could be even worse, setting up America’s vast middle class as collateral damage in his so-called “war against the wealthy,” according to recent analysis by the Heritage Foundation.
E.J. Antoni, a research fellow with the Grover M. Hermann Center at the Heritage Foundation, says Biden’s 2025 budget would increase taxes across the board for everyone except the mega-wealthy, as well as change rules around large retirement accounts.
"Wealthy individuals with large retirement accounts will be forced to withdraw any savings over the government's predetermined limits. To add insult to injury, those withdrawals will be taxed at a penalty rate," Antoni states in his commentary.
Antoni goes on to note that the move would disincentivize saving into financial assets like stocks, while those with large retirement nest-eggs would be forced to liquidate their holdings, further driving down demand, as well as stock prices. As a result, this would prevent middle-class Americans from quickly growing their retirement funds.
The wealthy would then likely invest into real estate. Antoni points out this would, in turn, cause demand for real estate to increase – along with its prices – and essentially lock out the middle-class from home ownership.
"As wealthy investors gain additional incentives to purchase real estate, homes for sale will be taken off the market, replaced by homes for rent. This will force many Americans to rent forever and to miss out on what is often a middle-class family’s largest component of their wealth: owning a home." Antoni said.
Antoni warns that disincentivizing investment and savings will adversely affect private investment and innovation, and will slow economic growth.
"The middle class are simply collateral damage in Biden’s war on wealth. His assault on high-income earners, innovators and other targets of political demagoguery will cause far more financial casualties among average Americans – the very group Biden claims to defend," Antoni said.
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