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John Jackson
MM, you didn’t say it, but the subtext of your post is that Biden is the cause of all of what Americans perceive now to be wrong with our economy and country.
In this regard, I’m not sure why you brought up our health care system – for many years/decades we have spent way more (50% more on average) per capita on our fragmented and dysfunctional health care system than any other advanced nation and this has bought us healthcare outcomes (measured in commonly accepted measures of public health such as life expectancy, infant mortality, etc) that are significantly below other first world nations. I know it’s an article of faith on the right that this is just another thing that Biden has screwed up royally, but the dysfunction of our woefully underperforming health care system has been building for decades.
MM also simplistically lays the blame for high gas prices at Biden’s feet. The reason that gas prices are high now is that OPEC, Russia and other oil-producing nations cut output drastically as a result of collapsing demand during the pandemic and they have not ramped production back up as economies around the world have recovered.
It’s also worth noting that the U.S. has plenty of production capability to meet its domestic needs and is now the world’s largest oil producer and a net exporter of all oil products. But the price U.S oil producers charge for their oil is determined pretty much by world prices and what do you think the chances are that Exxon, Chevron and others, out of patriotic concern for their fellow Americans, might charge less than what their OPEC counterparts are getting?
I think the supply chain issues, though real in some cases, have overall been exaggerated. When I go to the supermarket the shelves seem just as full as before and I’ve not had any problems shopping in other stores. I’m not happy to admit that I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon but I can’t say that their virtual shelves seem depleted either.
Of course, one of the genuine shortages is the unavailability of new cars and this has also led to a run-up in prices for used cars. Also, major appliances are in very tight supply. Both shortages have been caused by a chip shortage which began 2-3 years ago. Using MM’s logic, since the chip shortage started on his watch, isn’t it reasonable to blame the high price of new and used cars on Trump?
What shortages there are are largely due not to governmental policy but to the fact that many American consumers are flush with cash because for the past two years they haven’t been traveling, going out to eat, or buying the vast array of other services that in a normal year account for 70% of the U.S. economy. Instead they have been buying “stuff” and most of the shortages and inflation we see now are the result of an abnormal amount of money chasing a limited supply of goods. It’s called the law of supply and demand (something conservatives are supposed to know about).
The fact is that the economy does more or less what it wants to do and, despite what most people think, government policies affect its behavior largely at the edges.
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