Biden has become detached from economic reality

In a recent interview with CNN, President Biden downplayed Americans’ genuine concerns about the economy in general and inflation in particular, declaring, “We’ve already turned it around … the polling data has been wrong all along.”

Most Americans are “personally in good shape,” Biden added. “They have the money to spend.”

Interestingly, Biden did receive some pushback from CNN’s Erin Burnett. That in itself goes to show that at least one of Biden’s mainstream media allies understands how ridiculously out of touch he has become, less than six months before this year’s general election.

In reality, the vast majority of Americans say they do not have money to spend on anything but the bare necessities.

According to a 2023 payroll.org survey, 78 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. When asked why they were living paycheck to paycheck, the number one response, by far, was: “High monthly bills.”

It goes without saying that nearly 80 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck is very bad news; however, it’s much worse than that. Incredibly, 29 percent of Americans “reported that their income doesn’t even cover their standard expenses,” according to a 2023 Forbes Advisor poll.

Because under Biden prices for everyday goods and services are rising much faster than wages, more and more Americans are resorting to using credit cards to make ends meet. In early 2021, Americans had less than $800 billion in credit card debt. Just three years later, that has skyrocketed to an all-time record of $1.1 trillion.

Moreover, credit card delinquencies have risen every month of the Biden administration, as more than 20 percent of Americans have “maxed out” their cards over the past three years. Americans are also struggling to pay their auto loans, and more than 20 million households are unable to pay their utility bills on time.

In short, President Biden is apparently clueless when it comes to the economic circumstances of most Americans.

Let me offer a snapshot of what Americans think about their personal financial situations, according to several recent polls conducted by Gallup. Here are a few of the headlines:

• “Americans Continue to Name Inflation as Top Financial Problem”
• “Confidence in Biden Economic Stewardship Historically Low”
• “Americans Expect Home Prices to Rise, See Market as Poor”
• “Americans Remain Discouraged About Personal Finances”
• “U.S. Mood Remains Glum; 18 percent Satisfied With State of Nation”
• “More in U.S. Say Inflation Is Causing Financial Hardship”

It is ironic that Biden is so wildly out of touch with the struggles of everyday Americans, considering that he constantly portrays himself as someone especially attuned to blue collar America. In the aforementioned CNN interview, Biden mentioned that he approaches the economy from “a Scranton perspective” while his 2024 election opponent, former President Donald Trump, comes from “a Mar-a-Lago perspective.”

But during his decades-long career in the U.S. Senate, Biden repeatedly did the bidding of big banks and credit card companies. What’s more, his administration’s policies have been a boon to the ultra-wealthy, politically connected elite, while wreaking havoc on the rest of the nation. This is particularly evident in Biden’s energy policies, which include huge subsidies for pricey electric vehicles and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars diverted to “green energy” projects that overwhelmingly benefits Biden’s donor class to the detriment of most Americans.

As my colleague Sterling Burnett recently wrote, “after less than two full years in office, Biden’s climate and energy policies increased average household energy costs by more than $2,300.”

At this point, it is no secret that Bidenomics has not achieved the Biden administration’s goal of rebuilding the U.S. “economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down.” In fact, based on empirical data, something like the opposite has occurred. As Bloomberg reports, under Biden, U.S. income inequality has risen to an all-time high.

And the opposite scenario took place during the Trump administration. As Reuters put it, “Income inequality in the United States narrowed in the first three years of the Trump administration as rising wages and a low unemployment rate fueled gains for lower-income and less educated families, according to U.S. Federal Reserve data.”

More than three years into the Biden presidency, it is already evident that the vast majority of Americans recognize Bidenomics as a disaster for the nation.

Will Biden at last come to the same conclusion? Or will he remain blissfully unaware of the damage his economic policies have unleashed upon the American people? Those are open questions.

Chris Talgo is editorial director at the Heartland Institute.