Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he isnât buying all that Democratic âjoyâ on display at this past weekâs Democratic National Convention in Chicago during a Sunday appearance with Jake Tapper on CNNâs State of the Union.
During their conversation, Tapper brought up the âdisciplinedâ and âwell-producedâ DNC this week that, as the journalist put it, âconveyed patriotism and unity.â Graham didnât see it that way.
âWell, I didnât see what you saw,â Graham told Tapper with a laugh. âIf youâre a Republican, you saw a hate fest. You saw a hate fest full of insults.â
âAmericans are not joyful when they go to the gas station and fill up their car,â he continued. âTheyâre not joyful when they make their mortgage payment. Theyâre not joyful when they go to the grocery store. People are hurting, and this whole joy love fest doesnât exist in the real world.â
To bolster his claim, Graham pointed to the gas prices, the state of the border, and inflation during Donald Trumpâs presidency when âthe world was not on fire.â
Heâs either lying or what he said gives us a look into his shitty perspective of the world. Either way such a miserable and pathetic existence.
The problem with inflation is that itâs sticky i.e. the inflation that happened under Trump didnât go away under Biden. Inflation has been slower (although youâll notice itâs still elevated) but the inflation that already happened is baked in to that.
People can feel that things are more expensive than they used to be. It doesnât matter that things are getting more expensive slower, what matters is a bunch of inflation already happened and it didnât go away (and, in fact, just kept getting worse)
Tranditionally, inflation paired with rising income isnât a big problem.
The real terror of inflation in the modern era is that wages remain stagnant.
Actually, real wages are up for six years running.
Not according to the Atlanta Fed.
Through May 2024, real wages are up 0.5 percent year over year. While real wage growth has turned slightly positive in recent months, the level of real wages is still below where they were at the onset of the inflation surge that we began to see in the first quarter of 2021.
Itâs ever present too. If inflation were to ever stop for a sustained amount of time I guarantee it would be a far worse political issue. In the meantime things always cost more tomorrow than they will today which is why I argued what I did: relative inflation control was better than it was for almost everyone else under Biden than Trump because it is one of the only ways to fairly compare administrations as each one experiences their one unique circumstances.
Well yeah, inflation is part of economic growth under capitalism. Thatâs just how the system functions, no argument.
What people want is prices to come back down again, and that would require price controls (which Harris is actually talking about when she talks about stopping âprice gougingâ - Iâm tentatively interested to see if she follows through on that)