by Jay Ambrose
He’s confused, President Joe Biden is, and he ought to refuse State of the Union speeches in which this truth spills out and viewers confirm what they have already learned, that he has no idea what he’s doing.
It’s not that ideological exhibitionists posing as experts haven’t advised him, but, for starters, how is it that he brings up his American Rescue Plan, saying it helped produce 6.5 million new jobs?
Understand as others have noted that the pandemic cost us something like 9 million jobs and, after prolonged pain, we began to experience at least a semblance of recovery and businesses came back to life with a need for employees. They did get help from government — something like $4 trillion in COVID-19 relief was enacted under the Trump administration — but what another $2 trillion in this plan provided was increased market demand at a time when supply was shrunk by pandemic wreckage.
In other words, we were already getting the jobs and the plan gave us inflation, the highest inflation in 40 years, pain and suffering spread throughout the land. Biden, however, had another explanation, namely businesses looking out for their own interests at the cost of the rest of us. They did something else. They generously, intelligently raised wages higher and higher if to no avail as the inflation devoured the extra money.
As expressed in his speech, Biden’s own idea about higher wages is to impose a $15-an-hour minimum wage that could cause some businesses to shrink or fold, particularly hurt poor states and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, possibly cost a million jobs. Understand, by the way, that people starting work at the current minimum wage usually make more money as they quickly get more experience, are often the second or third wage-earner in a household and receive financial help known as tax credits.
In the speech, by the way, Biden called himself a capitalist as he also said with intimation of a growl that our tax system is unfair, a gift to the rich while others get hit hard. Guess what? Our tax system is the most progressive in the developed world. The Washington Post, for example, points out that the rich in France, Germany, Sweden and Britain get a much bigger break than our rich. In these United States, the top half of all earners pay 97% of the federal income tax compared to 3% paid by the bottom half.
Biden also mentioned wanting to see the middle class grow when, at least in pre-pandemic times, it was shrinking because so many were moving into the upper income class. The middle class in Europe pays more in taxes but does get more welfare in return, intensive government control forever reigning over independence.
Like his predecessor Donald Trump and a great many other Americans, Biden is also into “buy America,” don’t trade abroad, which is another sure-fire way of raising prices, also known as diminishing purchasing power.
It is true that free international trade can hurt some economic sectors that do not have certain foreign advantages, but the country as a whole benefits, and the number of overall jobs increase from the additional wealth. The Scottish economist Adam Smith taught as much more than 200 years ago.
To be sure, there are reasons we want to do less trading with China, which wants to take over the world even if it requires Muslim murder, breaking international law, stealing our technology, attacking Taiwan, erasing Hong Kong freedoms and fashioning a powerful military as we let ours diminish. President Barack Obama had a plan for a multinational Asian trade arrangement that could substitute for Chinese trade, but both Republicans and Democrats said no thank you.
The Biden speech went on for more than an hour and it had its merits, on the subject of Ukraine, for instance, and his promise to cure cancer, but it also pointed to incompetence the public has noticed, or so the polls say.
