| EnricoPallazzo said: I have the "benefit" of participating in discussions in both fields, which allows me to have some kind of insight on what both sides think. My ignorant and non scientific view would be: 1) Inflation, Inflation, Inflation. I won't go into specifics as it would require a book instead of a post, but people cannot correlate the increase in GDP and low unemployment with the absurd loss of purchase power the average Joe suffered. A lot of economic growth has come from huge government spending and debt (since Obama 2 but it got much worse under Trump 1 and Biden) which creates inflation. Due to several factors, this does not necessarily reflects on the official government numbers, so Joe Doe looks at "official" inflation rates of 3% but his rent, food, gas, mortgage, everything is WAY more expensive than a few years ago, when Trump was in power. Saying "we have the strongest economy" or "USA GDP is really growing" says nothing to Joe Doe if now he needs to go into credit card debt to pay for everyday stuff. |
The inflation of 2021-2024 was caused directly by Covid stimulus. If it was just a matter of the U.S having a more generous stimulus spending during the Obama and pre-Covid Trump periods, then the U.S would be a leader in the pack among developed countries (as most countries took more austere positions after the Great Recession.) But the U.S was about middle of the pack when it came to inflation.
So yes, increasing the money-supply and injecting it into the economy through stimulus packages is definitely the cause of the 2021-2024 inflation, but what other choice did the U.S government (or any other national government) have? Remember, both Democrats and Republicans voted for the Covid stimulus packages, including the PPP loans, robust unemployment insurance, and the stimulus checks. People were locked down with not much to do, so they went into a spending frenzy. Supply chains couldn't keep up without their former workforce. You were bound to get inflation. But the alternative situation would've been much, much worse. We would've entered a severe recession with unemployment rates in the double-digits and a slow recovery. More people would have died from Covid than those who did. So the inflationary spending was a lesser of two evils, and nobody really was questioning it (other than a few fiscal hawks) in 2020. It's only after Biden was elected that you started to see the rest of conservatives (other than fiscal hawks) start to question it.
