Breitbart had a fun piece this morning comparing the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden. Conservatives like to do these real surface comparisons about inflation and say, "See! Democrats can't handle money!" Well, that's true, but nobody in Washington can. That's why we're $30 trillion in debt.
Yes Carter had inflation, but did he cause it? Or did he inherit it? And what were the root causes of it? Was it at all similar to the inflation under Biden? Carter didn't cause any of it and Biden caused half of it.
Nixon had W.I.N. (whip inflation now) and price controls. Inflation was already raging under him. The '73 Arab Oil Embargo set it on fire, but the slow burn started in '71. The other contributor to inflation the author didn't mention was Nixon taking us off the gold standard. France was saying okay I want gold, Nixon panicked.
The other big omission was that while Reagan did cut taxes for the rich (one was he put a salary cap for SSA withholding's for the wealthy), he dramatically raised them on the working class SSA and Medicare. Not to mention a lot of Reagan's "success" was from doing it on the "credit card". He didn't pay for any of it. He came into office with approx $926 billion in debt, he left with $2.7 trillion in debt. He tripled the national debt.
There was no magic. He indebted his grandchildren. But the big collapse of course was Nixon creating the EPA in '71 and having them within 3 years outlaw sulfur emissions. One outward example of that was it killed the 'muscle car' craze, with the birth of fuel standards. But where it killed the economy for all time was by telling industry they couldn't have sulfur emissions they went overseas.
Biden's two gunshots were also self inflicted. He has continued the policy of just printing money out of thin air "in response to COVID", but the other (once again) was oil prices. It is not the oil free for all it was under Trump. Couple that with "Russian embargoes" and we are fucked. Prices have doubled. An economy can't handle that. Repercussions are swift and harsh.
So the bottom line is Carter didn't cause 'his' inflation, Biden has.
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