Against all economist predictions, June brought another round of historic inflation that rose at its highest rate in four decades.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the consumer price index for last month shot up to 9.1 percent. That’s up 1.3 percent across the board since May and up 0.3 percent from what economists at Bloomberg predicted just one day before the report was released.
Prices across the board have climbed since last month and have significantly risen since last year. The biggest culprits were fuel oil, which is up 98.5 percent since June of 2021; gasoline, which is up 59.9 percent since last year and is averaging $4.63 a gallon; electricity, which is up 13.7 percent; and food at home, which is up 12.2 percent.
It’s past time for Americans to stop believing the economists and members of the White House, who have repeatedly and falsely claimed that the economy isn’t as bad as it seems.
Staff at the financial publication Kiplinger claimed at the beginning of June that “the overall inflation rate is likely to stay at the same high level in June.”
“It should peak at about 9% by the end of the summer, then decline gradually after that, ending the year at about 8.0% before dropping to 3-4% next year,” the Kiplinger article stated.
Just one day before the latest CPI report, writers at MarketWatch pondered whether U.S. inflation would reach 9 percent.
Predictions like that sound hopeful to Americans who are sick and tired of shelling out hundreds just to fill up at the pump and feed their families. Yet every month, “the experts” seem to be caught off guard when the newest inflation numbers surpass their overly optimistic predictions.
This month’s report isn’t an isolated incident. Ever since President Joe Biden assumed office, economic “experts” featured on TV screens and front pages have minimized inflation and the effects it is having on Americans. Even before Biden’s term, economists were getting things seriously wrong. As Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi noted in 2018, there’s an “economists say” clique that leaves out any economist who rejects “whatever policy liberals happen to be plying at the moment.”
“There is also plenty of evidence that econ reporters at major publications have spent the past decade propping up economists who tell them what they want to hear,” Harsanyi wrote.
No matter how much Biden or the corporate media try to downplay the effects of inflation, Americans care about the strains on their pocketbooks and are too smart to believe Vladimir Putin is to blame for their high grocery, energy, and rent bills.
Despite the White House’s best efforts to brush off concerns about the economy with lies, polling suggests the economy, inflation, and the cost of living are all top priorities for a plurality of U.S. voters.
After a recent survey by Momentive found that 52 percent of American adults believe they are worse off financially than they were in 2021, it should come as no surprise that U.S. economic woes under the Democrat-controlled federal government appear to be the biggest indicator of how Americans will vote in the upcoming midterms.
