Bidenomics

[formosan]

Happy Meals have become an increasingly unaffordable luxury since Biden took office.
The government uses the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index to measure inflation.

For instance, when President Joe Biden took office, the year-over-year inflation rate was roughly 1.4%. CNN indicated the Biden inflation rate reached a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022.

Last week, the Labor Department indicated that the CPI for all urban consumers "increased by 0.3 percent in April on a seasonally adjusted basis, after rising 0.4 percent in March[.] ... Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.4 percent before seasonal adjustment."

According to the BLS inflation calculator, prices generally increased by approximately 21.5% between December 2019 and March 2024, according to TheStreet.

Some consumers have apparently turned instead to fast-food prices to gauge just how much purchasing power they have lost in recent years.

FinanceBuzz has made historical price comparisons easier, contrasting fast-food menu prices in 2014 and prices in 2024 on the basis of pricing data sourced from ItsYummi.com, FastFoodMenuPrices.com, and MenuWithPrice.com, cross-referenced with restaurants' official websites.

The breakdown claimed that the price of:

the McChicken increased by 199% over the 10-year stretch, from $1.00 in 2014 to $2.99 in 2024;
the McDouble increased by 168%, from $1.19 to $3.19;
medium fries by 138%, from $1.59 to $3.79;
the Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal by $122%, from $5.39 to $11.99;
the Oreo McFlurry by 88%, from $2.39 to $4.49;
the 10 Piece McNugget Happy Meal by 83%, from $5.99 to $10.99;
the 4 Piece McNugget Happy Meal by 67%, from $2.99 to $4.99;
the Big Mac by 50%, from $3.99 to $5.99; and
the price of a medium drink increased by 25%, from $1.29 to $1.61.
McDonald's — which has reportedly contested the figures, saying "pricing is set by individual franchisees and varies by restaurant" — is not the only restaurant suffering what some are calling "McFlation."

Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen's menu items have, on average, allegedly jumped by 86% in price since 2014. Taco Bell has reportedly seen an 81% average increase. Dining out at Chipotle Mexican Grill now, 10 years later, apparently costs 75% more.

It appears some of the more dramatic price increases have taken place over the past four years.

TheStreet indicated that the price of medium French fries at McDonald's increased by 134.1%, from $1.79 to $4.19 since 2019; the price of the McChicken increased by 201.6%, from $1.29 to $3.89; the price of the Big Mac increased by 87.7%, from $3.99 to $7.49; and price of the cheeseburger increased by 215%, from $1 to $3.15.

McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski told analysts in February, "I think what you're going to see as you head into 2024 is probably more attention to what I would describe as affordability," reported Fortune.

I will find out soon....we buy a DQ cone each to celebrate the start of summer.

[Herman]

Take your trolling to your own thread. Derailing this one because you aren't getting enough attention in your own thread is pretty gay.

Gay is one thing old Joe does well.

[DKG]

Without a doubt, Bidenomics has been a disaster for American families, with no relief in sight as the November election approaches. Yet, Joe Biden and his supporters have done everything they can to gaslight and spin their economic disasters and the country's overall economic malaise into a cause for celebration.

One cheerleading Democrat after another has tried to manufacture an alternate reality. Pay no attention to your skyrocketing bills. Never mind the tech layoffs. Inflation? What inflation? Perhaps the most outlandish spin so far comes courtesy of Brian Beutler, a senior editor at the New Republic, in a Substack essay titled, "Biden Beat Trumpflation and the Trump Crime Wave."

Beutler tries to bend reality from the start. "Trumpflation" — really? When Joe Biden took office in January 2021, inflation was running about 1.4% annually. In fact, under Donald Trump's tenure, then-Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said at one point that inflation was too low. And in May 2021, after Trump was out of office, Yellen, now helming the Treasury Department, said she didn't see any inflation problem ahead.

While year-over-year inflation measures peaked under Biden in June 2022 at around 9.1%, cumulative increases since he took office are nearly 20% as measured by the Consumer Price Index, with the real impact felt by consumers even more severe.

Speaking of his liberal friends, Beutler laments, "I don't know any who doubt my premise: Republicans would love to inherit this economy. They'd brag about how it became good the moment they took charge, and they'd quickly reap the political spoils." We have already established that the author and Democrats are both decoupled from reality, but wanting to inherit this economy? My goodness.

Nobody wants to inherit this economy.

Biden has not only fueled massive inflation but also embellished economic growth figures, which are now declining, with the first quarter GDP coming in nearly a percentage point lower than expected.

Growth in large part has come a result of the government running massive deficits. The U.S. deficit-to-GDP is currently around double the historic average. It is highly unusual for deficits to be that large when the economy is showing growth. More tax receipts should cut deficits. In an unfortunate turn of events, the Biden administration has done the opposite — it used deficit spending to create growth, something that has been done at an incredible cost to taxpayers, with interest rates near 15-year highs.

This has created a national debt nearing $35 trillion with interest expense at a $1.7 trillion run-rate. If nothing shifts in terms of spending or interest rates, debt service will soon become the largest individual government expenditure.

It gets worse, believe it or not. The Biden administration has weaponized the U.S. dollar, and we are now facing an acceleration of central banks and governments trying to reduce their dependence on the dollar as a reserve currency, which will ultimately make financing the U.S. government more expensive.

Americans are also contending with record-high household debt and a dwindling personal savings rate, coming in at less than half of the historic average for the first three quarters of the year, ending March 2024 at 3.2%.

On top of that, key provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, including the lower individual tax rates, begin to expire at the end of 2025.

Whoever wins in November will need to contend with addressing that as well.

While living in a fantasy world is the Democratic Party's strong suit, let me say that nobody, and I mean no one, should want to inherit this fiscal mess. That is reality, and there is no way to spin it.

[JOE]

It gets worse, believe it or not. The Biden administration has weaponized the U.S. dollar, and we are now facing an acceleration of central banks and governments trying to reduce their dependence on the dollar as a reserve currency, which will ultimately make financing the U.S. government more expensive.

I thought Trump is also guilty in that regard DKG KG

Whether Democrat or Republican The US has been doing this for decades and now its coming back to haunt them with the a revolt by other countries & the rise of BRICS

[Brent]

Nowhere has the weaponization of the dollar been more evident than in Russia, where the Biden administration has brought unprecedented financial pain to bear on Vladimir Putin's government. But, Trump is equally responsible for that. G

Go to your bullshit metals thread troll.

[JOE]

Nowhere has the weaponization of the dollar been more evident than in Russia, where the Biden administration has brought unprecedented financial pain to bear on Vladimir Putin's government. But, Trump is equally responsible for that. G

Go to your bullshit metals thread troll.

Actually I think the US & West should outright seize Russia's foreign financial assets outright, sell them to pay for rebuilding Ukraine once that war is over Brent rent. That's only fair since they started that War and launched an illegal invasion of the Ukraine

Likewise the governments in Canada frequently freeze and seize assets of criminals and drug dealers if they get convicted of crimes. Putin needs to be held accountable too  I'd declare him a war criminal and arrest him if he dares set foot outside Russia.

[Brent]

Another interesting disucussion derailed by a seventy year old attention starved asshole.