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   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: cac@gak.com   
      
   On 13 Dec 2021, "Trump's Omicron Hoax"  posted some   
   news:sp7mka$4bp$5@news.dns-netz.com:   
      
   > Lee wrote   
   >   
   >> Kamala's first duty is to suck off Joe Biden every day, if he can get   
   >> an erection.   
      
   Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the   
   White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s   
   worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked   
   as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.   
   With President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda stalled in Congress, the   
   American Rescue Plan — the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill Democrats passed in   
   March 2021 — may stand as his biggest achievement.   
      
   But did it contribute to the country’s current inflationary mess?   
      
   The massive spending law, which included $1,400 checks for each person in   
   a family, generous expansions to unemployment insurance and child tax   
   credit benefits, and hundreds of billions in aid to state and local   
   governments, was intended to help people in need and stimulate economic   
   demand, and it did.   
      
   Some economists argue, though, that all this came at the cost of making   
   inflation worse. New Consumer Price Index numbers released Wednesday   
   showed prices up 8.3 percent compared to one year before. And “core   
   inflation,” which excludes volatile energy and food prices, rose 0.6   
   percent in just one month.   
      
   Countries around the world are struggling with inflation due to pandemic   
   disruptions, but the Biden stimulus made the US’s inflation problem more   
   severe, to at least some extent. “I think we can say with certainty that   
   we would have less inflation and fewer problems that we need to solve   
   right now if the American Rescue Plan had been optimally sized,” said   
   Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings   
   Institution.   
      
   Inflation has brought with it two big problems. The first is already   
   evident: Because most Americans’ wages haven’t risen enough to keep up   
   with it, real (inflation-adjusted) wages have been declining at the   
   highest rate in four decades.   
      
   The second problem is, if inflation remains so persistent, what reining it   
   in could entail. The Federal Reserve has started raising interest rates in   
   an effort to cool down the economy. They’re trying to do so gingerly,   
   aiming for a “soft landing.” But if demand and investment end up   
   plummeting in response, the US could face a painful recession.   
      
   What the future holds is uncertain, but to understand how we got here,   
   it’s worth reassessing the past. The American Rescue Plan was drafted with   
   good intentions, but it caused real problems.   
      
   The US had significantly worse “core” inflation than comparable economies   
   It’s important to understand the broader context. Inflation has been   
   happening across the world, caused by pandemic-related disruptions, and   
   exacerbated this year by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s Covid-19   
   lockdowns. Even before the American Rescue Plan passed, “the seeds for a   
   high-inflation environment were already planted,” said Marc Goldwein of   
   the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.   
      
   But regarding the exact amount of inflation, the US stands out. And it   
   started to stand out shortly after President Biden took office.   
      
   From 2021 onward, what’s known as “core inflation” has been significantly   
   higher in the US than in other wealthy countries. (Core inflation is a   
   common metric that excludes food and energy prices, which tend to be   
   volatile, to try to get a better sense of general price levels and   
   inflation in an economy.)   
      
   A recent article published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco   
   makes this point. The authors — Òscar Jordà, Celeste Liu, Fernanda Nechio,   
   and Fabián Rivera-Reyes — compare core inflation in the US to the average   
   of eight wealthy countries (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada,   
   the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Finland). Before 2021, these and the   
   US had similar inflation levels. Then the US’s shot up.   
      
      
   Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco   
   The authors don’t mince words about why they think that is, writing:   
   “Estimates suggest that fiscal support measures designed to counteract the   
   severity of the pandemic’s economic effect may have contributed to this   
      
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