The Economy Is Suffering From Too Little Government Intervention, Not Too Much
From Tucker Carlson to Larry Summers, free market devotees are blaming inflation on Joe Biden’s “big government” economic policies. In reality, the administration has done far too little to insulate Americans from the economic effects of the pandemic.
The inauguration decorations had barely been cleared from the West Lawn when the neoliberal industrial complex started drumming up panic about inflation. Republicans desperate for an attack line against an incoming president — the right-wing think tanks, the media machine behind them, corporate executives, and even former Barack Obama advisor and corporate remora Larry Summers — all linked arms before a single law had been passed to tell Americans how having their government step in to protect their economic security was actually a bad thing. And with inflation continuing to tick up, they’ve kept up the strategy.
Tucker Carlson has been telling his viewers that the rising prices they’re seeing are due to government support payments and bosses finally paying their workers a half-decent wage. Former McDonald’s CEO Ed Rensi charged that Joe Biden saying “he’s going to shut down oil, shut down the pipelines, move away from fossil fuels” ended up “dramatically” fueling the problem. Here’s the House Republican Conference blaming Biden’s “reckless $5.5 TRILLION tax and spend spree” for the issue, a claim regurgitated by Republican officials like Senator Rick Scott. This campaign is one the GOP plans to take into the 2022 elections. It seems like it’s already working: 62 percent of Americans blamed rising inflation on Biden’s policies in a recent Morning Consult poll, a three-point uptick since July.
It’s also nonsense. The inflation facing the country right now has far more to do with the ongoing disruptions of the pandemic than Biden’s stalled domestic agenda. His administration’s real failure is that, by capitulating to these same forces on domestic policy, he’s left working Americans less equipped to deal with the jump in prices in the short and long terms.