In 2021, the United States is tied for the highest level of inflation suffered by any of the world’s 35 developed economies, according to statistics released from the International Monetary Fund.
The U.S. and Iceland are for the fastest rate of rising prices among 35 advanced economies. The IMF’s “Inflation rate, average consumer prices” rated both nations’ inflation at 4.3%.
The world’s worst inflation rate belonged to socialist Venezuela, which experienced a whopping 2,700%.
The IMF figure is significantly lower than the 6.8% year-on-year increase in the Consumer Price Index that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last Friday. The BLS noted the soaring inflation rate through October marks “the largest 12-month increase since the period ending June 1982.”
The largest increases came from the cost of vehicles, gasoline, shelter, and food, the BLS noted.
The report stands as a further rebuke to the Biden administration, which spent months downplayed the impact higher prices have on average American citizens. The administration insisted the sticker shock consumers experienced in grocery stores and at gas pumps is “transitory.”
But Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told the Senate on November 30 that inflation appears here to stay. “I think the word ‘transitory’ has different meanings to different people,” he said. To many, he said, it implies that inflation will be “short-lived. We tend to use it to mean that it won’t leave a permanent mark in the form of higher inflation. I think it’s probably a good time to retire that word and try to explain more clearly what we mean.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen agreed days later. “I am ready to retire the word transitory,” she said. “I can agree that that hasn’t been an apt description of what we are dealing with.”
Inflation is especially concerning, because it falls hardest on the poorest Americans and those on fixed incomes. The higher prices rise, the fewer goods people with the lowest incomes can afford.
Despite this, numerous legacy media outlets have shifted gears to question its impact or portray inflation as an economic Robin Hood that redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, asked on Saturday, “Is there any good reason to believe that inflation hits low-income households especially hard?”
Aside from priorities, is this even true? Is there any good reason to believe that inflation hits low-income households especially hard? 1/ https://t.co/72hxWaL5zW
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 11, 2021
CNN also ran a story earlier this month titled “Why inflation can actually be good for everyday Americans and bad for rich people.” CNN’s Allison Morrow argued that inflation “empowers workers,” but later in the article Morrow admitted that “wage growth broadly hasn’t kept up with price increases.”
Adjusted for inflation, average U.S. wages are down 1.9% since last year, according to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The newest numbers call into question the future of President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” social spending bill, as wavering Democrats have cited galloping inflation — and questions about whether Americans voted for “transformative” changes to America’s social fabric — to oppose its passage.
“Inflation is real. It’s not transitory. It’s alarming. It’s going up, not down. And I think that should be something we’re concerned about,” said Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), a pivotal moderate vote, on Monday.
The potentially inflationary pressures created by the “Build Back Better” act is a bipartisan concern. “Spending another $5 trillion, heaping that fuel onto the inflation fire won’t help, but really it’s the policies within this bill” that pose the greatest threat to the economy, said Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the Republican Leader on the House Ways and Means Committee. “They make the labor shortage worse, which will drive inflation. They do that by no longer requiring earnings or work in the Child Tax Credit, and they exploded the subsidies in Obamacare – so much so that between the two policies, experts predict 2 million fewer workers will be available.”
“So, here you are shoving more money into the economy, with fewer workers and supply chain problems,” Rep. Brady told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on Monday morning. “That means inflation is going to go higher, and it’s going to last longer.”
Related:
- CNN Story Says ‘Inflation Can Actually Be Good For Everyday Americans.’ Here’s What CNN Published Two Weeks Ago
- ‘Let Them Eat Cake’: The Most Condescending Things The Left Says About Inflation
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.