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Red-hot inflation is eroding American's wage gains and hurting Democrats in an election year

By Megan Henney - Inflation surged again in January, notching another four-decade high as strong consumer demand and pandemic-related supply-chain snarls fueled rapid price gains that wiped out the benefits of rising wages for most Americans.

The consumer price index rose 7.5% in January from a year ago, according to a new Labor Department report released Thursday, marking the fastest increase since February 1982, when inflation hit 7.6%. The CPI – which measures a bevy of goods ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents – jumped 0.6% in the one-month period from December.

Economists expected the index to show that prices surged 7.3% in January from the previous year and 0.5% on a monthly basis.

So-called core prices, which exclude more volatile measurements of food and energy, climbed 6% in January from the previous year – a sharp increase from December, when it rose 5.5%. It was the steepest 12-month increase since August 1982.

Rising inflation is eating away at strong wage gains that American workers have seen in recent months: Real average hourly earnings rose just 0.1% in January from the previous month, as the 0.6% inflation increase eroded the 0.7% total wage gain, according to the Labor Department. On an annual basis, real earnings actually declined 1.7% in January.

The inflation spike has been bad news for President Biden, who has seen his approval rating tumble as consumer prices rise. The White House has blamed the price spike on supply-chain bottlenecks and other pandemic-induced disruptions in the economy, while Republicans have pinned it on the president's massive spending agenda and his energy policies targeting the oil and gas industries.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/consumer-price-index-inflation-january-2022


Thanks you President Biden and "Lets go Brandon"

No, but he gets the credit. After all, he is the point of the spear.

Yup, a person would have to be really dumb to have not seen this coming.

#FJB&FYFVFH!

I was at a park when a mother sat beside and asked, "Which one's yours?" I looked at her and said, "I haven't decided yet."

Frank, if you recall... me, too.

If we look back in the Cbid rolodex, I was against it when it happened and Trump was the prez. Stoooopiiiiid.

I got the last one ($1,400 or something). Split it up and put in kid's accounts. Didn't get the first two (or was it three? Don't know why, prolly due to previous income for the first couple of rounds... didn't look into it).

I can kind of sympathize with folks that were put out from jobs to give them a helping hand on top of their unemployment - it's difficult to make ends meet for a family by only collecting unemployment and the lock downs didn't help in trying to get back into the workforce.

What REALLY stuck in my craw was folks living on welfare and other state sponsored free income who haven't worked for years (if ever) and never paid a dime into the system also got thousands of bucks in stimulus money on top of their their welfare. I remember overhearing many conversations of these leaches at Wally World complaining that some people got their stimulus money right away while others had to wait a couple weeks (waaa, waaa, waaa). Sometimes I'd butt in and let them know that Wally Word has openings that we can't fill. $17/hr to stock shelves and you can get hired on the spot. $15/hr to stand at the door and make sure nobody steals stuff (which, by the way, you can't do anything about except watch them walk on by and get a physical description, date, time, and best guestimate on what they took).

"Oh, no... I can't work... I'd lose my welfare, food stamps, and free health care."

We STILL have openings and short staffed in many areas. It doesn't take much physical labor to hang clothes on a hanger, stock the shelves in the pharmacy with bottles of vitamins and Tylenol, or Lego toys in the toy section. They have no problem taking them off the shelves and filling up a cart but it's too much "work" to put them on the shelves.

That is totally Franked up.

I can't disagree.

I love the ones who go right down the middle of aisle. I'll put my cart out far enough that they can't get past me. When they angrily say move I point out to them I am at the side of the aisle, they are in the middle and if they want to get by, then they need to move to the side of the aisle just like everyone else.

^ +1

No. Those checks were not dumb. Maybe too much to too many but still not dumb. They kept food in peoples' mouths an roofs over their head. That kept our economy afloat and liquid enough to prevent an even worse recession or depression. Now, it's just time to pay up for the recession. It happens every time. Some inflation is to be expected unfortunately (but hopefully no more).

Necessitated by a gov't shutdown. Staying at work would have kept people fed.

Those checks were dumb. Massive debt to help cover for arbitrary self inflicted wounds.

They did not even give me any….just the bill.

My bills are killing me...
Especially oil heating bills...

How much has oil gone up over the last two years?

I agree with you, but I wasn't saying the idea was dumb.
I was pointing out to posters before mine that it was not just Biden to blame.
It was dumb by both Administrations to send any money to people like me who were not impacted at all financially.

I didn't lose my job, didn't have pay or hours cut, the people that were hurt certainly needed the help.
But nothing changed in my household. Nothing changed for fixed income folks.
Nothing changed for people on public assistance either as far as I know.
But millions of working people were greatly hurt.

I did not need the handouts. It was wasteful.

[quote=BuckyB93 I split it in half and put in each of my kids accounts.[/quote]

Good for you!

I'm waiting for the headline that the numbers have been manipulated and the government is using an "Emperor's New Clothes" accounting metric.




The last time inflation was as bad as it is now, President Ronald Reagan was only finishing his first year in office.

Leonid Brezhnev was still alive and in charge of the Soviet Union. U2 was unknown in the United States, not yet having released the album War. The young company Apple was still two years away from launching its first Macintosh computer model.

That's how far back you have to go — February 1982 — to find a time when inflation was as bad as it was last month. It is now official that this is the worst inflation in 40 years. At 7.5%, prices are rising so quickly that they will double in less than 10 years if this rate of inflation continues.

Of course, Reagan inherited an inflation problem back in his own day. President Joe Biden, on the other hand, created his own inflation problem with the reckless spending that began his administration. With so many trillions already shoveled out the door in the form of COVID relief, Biden just couldn't resist the temptation to play Santa Claus himself. Inflation was the predictable result, and indeed one we predicted, due to a surge in deficit spending and the slowdown in production that occurred because of COVID-19.

Biden has spent the last few months attempting to compound his mistake further, spending another $5 trillion on his completely unnecessary Build Back Better boondoggle. Even now, knowing that inflation rose to 7.5% in January, Biden's White House is still calling on Congress to pass that bill, claiming, in contravention of all laws of economics, that it will make the problem better and not worse. Really? Is someone making use of all those crack pipes whose distribution to addicts Biden's Department of Health and Human Services just abruptly canceled?

The topline 7.5% inflation figure released on Thursday is quite close to the 12-month increase in the cost of groceries and restaurant food. Energy prices, however, are up a staggering 27% over the last 12 months. Electricity is up 11%. Natural gas is up 24%. Gasoline prices are up 40%.

In other words, there is no part of daily life that Bidenflation has not affected. Although workers' wages have gone up in nominal terms, they are not keeping up with the cost of everyday necessities.

At first, the Biden White House tried to maintain that the inflation problem was just temporary. That talking point has long since expired. This is becoming a crisis. The Federal Reserve will soon be forced to raise interest rates far more quickly than people are accustomed to, and to painful levels that haven't been seen in a generation.

For reference, mortgage interest rates had to top out above 13% before Reagan could beat inflation in the early 1980s. Could you even imagine that today? Can you imagine what it would do to the value of your home?

Biden inherited a rapidly recovering economy. All he had to do was get out of the way, let it happen, and claim credit. He couldn't manage that. Biden had an ideological vision that was more important than the nation's return to prosperity. Part of his agenda is to increase prices for fossil fuels, and another part is to give away massive government handouts, even if they cause inflation.

Consumers are now suffering the bitter results of bad policy decisions on his part. To borrow and tweak one of Reagan's old adages, economic recovery will only begin with job loss — that is, whenever Biden and most of the Democrats in Congress lose their jobs.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/suffer-like-its-1982-bidenflation-the-worst-in-40-years?u

In other words, I believe it's worse than we're being told.

My bills are killing me...
Especially oil heating bills...

The Last tank fill of 165 gallon s was at $3.399 a gal..
Approx. $554.00 if I remember right...and that was in early December...it prolly gone by now...I think I'm below half a tank for sure?
They hold 275 gal but only 250 really...

One time I went to a hotel. I asked the bellhop to handle my bag. He felt up my wife!
- RD