Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class

NY Post ^ | 26 May, 2022 | Glenn H. Reynolds

[MtnClimber]

Vladimir Lenin supposedly once said, “The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

There’s some doubt as to whether this line is genuine; regardless, it seems like a pretty good description of what the Biden administration is doing to America’s middle class.

Inflation is running rampant. The Producer Price Index, the most useful measure of general inflation, is up a whopping 16.3% from April 2021, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That means that roughly $1 out of every $6 that people earn has been lost to inflation in a single year. Or to put it another way, 80 minutes’ earnings out of every eight-hour day have been eaten up.

This is predictable, of course. Team Biden took an already-bloated federal budget and supersized it with spending last year, printing money hand-over-fist to fund a massive array of pork-filled programs, many if not most of which guided billions of dollars into the pockets of Democratic Party supporters.

President Joe Biden dismissed inflation worries at the time, saying that Milton Friedman — the famed inflation-fighting economist — no longer runs the show. Well, the late economist certainly didn’t run Biden’s show, but his observation that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon was borne out in spades as prices took off.

And it was a double whammy. Inflation comes when you have too much money chasing too few goods. The spending part provided the excess money, but the Biden team was right there helping to ensure fewer goods, too.

Gas prices going up? Not only was Biden’s spending program stimulating inflation, but at the same time Biden policies were reducing the amount of gasoline, diesel and heating oil those dollars could buy. Biden went wild canceling pipelines, ending gas and oil

[Orosius]

Bttt.

[antidemoncrat]

Before you can establish a totalitarian government you have to destroy the middle class and disarm the citizens. Does this sound like the Democrats game plan?

[Georgia Girl 2]

Of course they are trying to destroy the middle class.

[LouAvul]

Problem is, we see it. We recognize it. But we do nothing about it.

Various freepers keep chest thumping that a reckoning is coming; "lock and load", etc. Clichés. Platitudes.

Instead, a line from TS Eliot comes to mind: "That's the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper."

[1Old Pro]

If more middle class become more dependent on government subsidies and ppp loans, and energy stipends, etc, we’ll then you have them hooked on big government.

[Republicanprofessor]

But the signs I’ve been seeing say that the “Democrats work toward the Common Good.” I’ll be sure to vote for them. /sarc

[Ikeon]

People are stupid. 80-90% of the population want nothing to think about or care about but themselves. That us not an overstatement. Road rage, shootings, watch a plane land and how many people stand up before the plane ever stops. All self centered people who dont care about safety, kindness, maybe a mother with wet child, someone whos maybe having a bit of a panic attack.. everyone pushing and shoving instead of getting up when the people ahead of them clear the aisle.

stupid people are the norm, you can bet on it.

[MrRelevant]

To save us later of course.

[2nd Amendment]

I’m basically an optimist and I constant overestimate my fellow citizens. Who would have thought cutting police force funding would have led to more crime? And that there are 61 genders and that cutting off the Keystone Pipeline would lead to higher gas prices….and we would ship baby for pro 3rd world countries while some of infants die…. Etc etc

[Alberta's Child]

All of which is paid for by taxes and fees...on the middle class.

Maybe some of them, but not all of them. Federal taxes were minimal when the Homsetead Act was passed. And in the case of the programs adopted after 1950, very few people in the middle class paid more into these things than they got back in return.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Yep, working people and business owners.

[Vaduz]

Grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation and no oil supply of our own.

Stalin winks

[fatboy]

“Maybe some of them, but not all of them. Federal taxes were minimal when the Homsetead Act was passed. And in the case of the programs adopted after 1950, very few people in the middle class paid more into these things than they got back in return.”

_____________________________

According to Alberta’s Child, as a member of the middle class, I’m one in a million. Why? because I have never done any the following:

Collected Social Security
Collected Medicare
Collected unemployment
Collected welfare
Collected food stamps
Collected workman’s compensation
Collected section 8 housing

What I have done is:
Paid my taxes (income, real estate, sales, gasoline road tax)
Paid my fees (motor vehicles, puilding permits and so forth)
Paid my mortgage
Kept up on my insurance policies (auto, home, life)
Paid all of my debts (credit cards, student loans, car loans and so forth)
Stayed out of the judicial system and thus out of jail.

Here is a list of government goodies that I have received back more than I have paid in:____________________ (insert cricket sound)

[Lazamataz]

Thanks for posting that. Stellar read.

[Blennos]

Most welcome. He’s not called the “Great Greenfield” for nothing.