Bidenomics: you are poorer in real terms, and your retirement plan is worth less Are you better off today than two years ago?

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Due to taking Staff Sergeant Pico to her reassigned Army Reserve unit in advance of her deployment to Kuwait, Mrs Pico and I spent a few days in William Teach’s home state of North Carolina. When we fueled up in Kentucky, last Tuesday, before leaving, gasoline was $3.779. Naturally, I noticed that gasoline prices were higher in the states through which we traveled, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina, but not being familiar with fuel taxes in those great states, I didn’t pay very much attention.

Until yesterday, that is, as gasoline prices are now around $4.299 back in the Bluegrass State!

The ‘official’ inflation figures for April are scheduled to be released on Wednesday, May 11th, and Forbes is telling us that the inflation rate may fall less than anticipated:

Inflation May Fall Slower Than Expected

by Chuck Jones | Monday, May 9, 2022 | 8:45 AM EDT

The rapid rise in inflation is causing the Federal Reserve to aggressively raise interest rates along with deleveraging its $8.9 trillion balance sheet. This has thrown stocks into correction territory or bear markets. Two of the major reasons for the increase in inflation have been the upsurge in demand coming out of the pandemic and supply chain issues.

April’s CPI estimate will be announced Wednesday before the stock markets open. Expectations are for the all items rate to drop from 8.5% to 8.1%. To hit 8.1% the month-to-month inflation rate will have to fall from 2.3% in January, 2.6% in February and 3.8% in March to no more than 1.25% to hit the expected number.

Energy prices rose 32% on an annualized basis in March. In April Gasoline and Diesel prices were fairly flat, which will help lead to a lower inflation increase since they comprise about 4% of the inflation CPI Index and were up 48.2% year-over-year in March. However, natural gas prices increased in April, which will somewhat offset gasoline’s impact.

While stocks rebounded slightly on Monday, the market had previously reached its 2022 low, which led socialist and economic charlatan Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor during the Clinton Administration to tell us that “It’s worth pointing out once again that the stock market is not the economy.”

That’s true enough, but over half of Americans, roughly 56%, are invested in the stock market, primarily through 401(k) and 403(b) retirement plans, along with Individual Retirement Accounts. The Wall Street Journal reported that retirement plans have had a bad year, as stocks have had, and that funds which manage retirement savings for teachers, firefighters and other public workers returned a median -4.01% in the first quarter.

Thud!

In other words, if you are planning to retire right now, your retirement plan might well be smaller than it was on New Year’s Eve.

The year-over-year inflation rate for March was 8.5%, while the average wage rise was 6.0%. In other words, the average wage earning American was 2.5% poorer, in real terms, at the end of March than he was at the end of March 2021, just 2½ months into the Biden Administration. Of course, as William Teach noted, the President is blaming everything that has gone wrong on his predecessor and on the “MAGA” crowd that supported him.

In the meantime, President Biden is shipping American dollars to Ukraine!

In reality, Presidents don’t control the economy. Realistically speaking, both no one and everyone control the economy: the American economy is 275 million economic actors taking literally billions of economic decisions every single day. Your decision to make your morning coffee at home or to buy a cup on the way to work has an economic impact, minuscule individually, but in the aggregate with other people’s similar choices determines whether the cashier at Seven/Eleven has a job. And as inflation increases, it just might make more sense for you to throw a pod in your Keurig and take that cup of coffee to work with you rather than make that stop at the convenience store or, [shudder!] Starbucks.

But while Presidents don’t control the economy, the decisions they take can certainly influence it, and President Biden has helped take an inflation rate below 2% when he took office to well over 8% in less than a year and a half in office. The Administration has pushed regulations which have increased costs on businesses, costs which are inevitably passed down to the end users of their products. And the leftists put in place by the (supposedly) more moderate Mr Biden are continuing to push for ever further left decisions and regulations.

But, hey, we did get rid of the guy who sent out all of those mean tweets!

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