Young Americans “are becoming paupers in their own country” as inflation and housing costs have increased under the Biden-Harris administration, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said on Wednesday.
During his speech in Byron Center, Michigan, Vance focused on the economic woes facing Americans and argued that the younger generation of U.S. adults is experiencing challenges in the housing market that their parents and grandparents did not face.
“Americans, especially young people, are becoming paupers in their own country. If we don’t do better, our young generation, they’re not going to own anything, they’re not going to have anything, they’re going to be renters in the country that their parents and grandparents built. Inflation is a disaster,” Vance said, according to The Detroit News.
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Median home prices in the U.S. have skyrocketed, hitting a peak of $479,500 in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to Rocket Homes. At the end of 2020, the final months of the Trump administration, the median home price was $358,700. Rent prices in the U.S. have also increased by around 19% since 2019, The Washington Post reported, making it harder for young Americans to save money for the increasing costs of owning a home.
While inflation dropped to 2.9% last month, it is still higher than it was during most of Trump’s presidency. The inflation rate hit a staggering 9.1% in June 2022 before it began to drop.
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Vance said a priority of the Trump-Vance administration would be to lower energy costs, which he argued would, in turn, bring down the cost of housing. Trump made similar comments in July when addressing the housing crisis.
“When the economy gets better, it’s hard to get better when you have high energy prices,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in Iowa. “We’ll get the prices way down and then the interest rates down and then the home builders will start building again, because nobody can get money from the bank because the interest rate’s high.”
The Republican vice presidential candidate and Ohio senator also blasted Michigan’s “failed leadership,” saying it has resulted in thousands of jobs disappearing in the Great Lakes State. He predicted the loss of jobs in Michigan would result in voters overwhelmingly turning out in support of Republicans in November.
“Michigan, people used to call it a blue wall state,” he said. “I think Michigan is a red wall state now because people are sick of losing their livelihoods and losing their jobs.”