Election Day approaches, and many issues are on our minds. The world is a dumpster fire, in so many ways – but the economy – well, look at the economy!
The economy is important. Critical. And yet, it’s doing fine, isn’t it?
The newsmedia point to the job numbers and the climbing stock market, and it sounds so good. We wouldn’t want to jeopardize such a strong economy, would we?
Some of us are undoubtedly thinking “The Biden-Harris regime must be okay after all; sure, I’m unemployed, but maybe I’m just personally having bad luck, and I shouldn’t hold it against them!”
Well, that’s an understandable thought… but it’s wrong – dead wrong – on a couple of levels.
First, remember that most of the stats they talk about are cooked by bureaucrats. Job creation numbers are always announced as wonderful at the beginning of the month, and then they are quietly revised downward a couple weeks later.
The unemployment claims numbers are similarly cooked, because they just don’t count people who’ve stopped looking or who have never worked, or who don’t intend to ever work, because they’re happy on welfare. The labor non-participation rate – which they never talk about – is at an all-time high, especially because of the unemployable illegal aliens brought in by Biden-Harris policies.
The stock market is different; it’s not manipulated, but in some ways, that’s even worse:
We must remember that the American stock market is denominated in US Dollars. The inflation that we all suffer from everywhere else has hit the stock market too – because the stock market is just that: it’s a market.
Frankly, the stock market has roughly held even with inflation since Jan 20, 2021. It hasn’t really grown, it’s been flat, by expanding in ever-more-worthless currency.
So the stock market looks like it’s grown – a 43,000 Dow sounds awfully nice, doesn’t it? – but what it really means is that the price to buy stocks – the stocks in which you need to invest for your retirement – keeps going up every day.
In short, just like every other retailer in the country, the same goods cost more in the store than they did before.
We don’t think of it that way, but the NYSE is just like a store, with a variety of goods on display. Instead of thousands of cans and boxes on the shelves, there are thousands of company stock certificates on the shelves. So, inflation is reflected in the market; everything in the market costs more now – much more – than it did four years ago.
If you’re buying stocks, as most of us are, through 401K plans and IRAs, through paycheck withholding and dollar-cost averaging strategies, then we are getting less and less stock for the same money, every year, as these stock prices go up.
And when we need that investment money someday, to buy a house or car, or to put kids through college or to fund our own retirements, the buying power of that money will have plummeted.
But it’s even worse than that, because this inflation is a permanent thing, and even though it only started to hit us in 2021, it immediately worked backward against everything we’ve been saving all our lives.
Inflation is a percentage rate that goes up and up; even when the inflation rate finally levels off, it’s not all that much of a victory, because these increased prices don’t drop back down. We’re stuck with this. For good.
Think about that now. Let’s say you’re 50, and you’ve been saving in the market since you were 21. The last four years of record inflation haven’t just hurt your last four years of investments; they’ve reduced the value of your prior thirty years of investments too.
You’re not just going to buy housing at a 2030 price with investments you bought at an inflated rate in the 2020s… you’re going to have to buy that housing at a 2030 price with investments you bought in 2010 and 2000 and 1990. Those investments have grown, but not enough to make up for these sudden, massive increases in cost.
How many nice dinners out, and how many theatre tickets, could you get with a thousand dollars of your retirement fund five years ago?
How many dinners out and theatre tickets will you be able to buy with that same thousand dollars today?
These last four years have destroyed everyone’s nest eggs – well, everyone except those in the favored industries of the Biden-Harris regime.
People heavily invested in Chinese windmill companies, Chinese solar panel companies, Chinese takeovers of American businesses – they’re probably doing all right.
But for the rest of us – for most of us – the past four years have been utterly destructive. And another four years of this would be unimaginable.
But why, you ask, if things are so bad, isn’t the stock market falling? Well, it is, in a way. It’s basically flat; the apparent climb just represents keeping up with inflation. If you measure inflation the right way – in terms of how much housing and food, college and cars, have skyrocketed, the market has only kept up with inflation, and that, just barely.
The stock market has largely baked in a Republican victory this fall. The market looks at the statistics and says “in all past times with such a rotten economy, the people have tossed out the incumbent party and elected the challenger,” so the analysts are pricing stocks based on their expectation of a much better economy in 2025 and beyond, because things will surely improve in the future when Trump and the GOP majorities return to Washington.
If the Republicans aren’t elected, there will be a market crash as this fundamental expectation is shattered.
One final point: Always judge first by your own circumstance. Yes, it’s possible for an individual to thrive in a bad economy, or for an individual to suffer in a good economy. But even so, your own experience in going to the supermarket, or in your own search for a job, is a real, valid experience that the politicians and press cannot spin, so you – as a voter – should view that as your most valid data point.
Has your company given you the same bonuses and the same raises this year that they gave you five years ago? Has your career trajectory improved or stagnated? Are there as many options in your field as there were before, or is it flat, or worse?
How about your friends and family – are people joyfully upgrading to better houses, are kids moving out of apartments and buying condos, or are housing prices and mortgage rates keeping them in the cramped old house or stuck in their parents’ basements?
- Lots of companies that used to proudly give employee annual bonuses and profit-sharing plans have had to suspend them for the past couple years, as they’ve been struggling.
- Lots of retailers can’t do additional holiday hiring because they just can’t afford it.
- Lots of stores are closing because they can’t afford the security needed in an environment that sets known criminals free to loot constantly.
- Lots of companies that usually hire college kids for the summer, or holiday help before Christmas, have reduced such programs; the profits aren’t there to support them.
These – and many more besides – are your real experiences, the real experiences of your friends and neighbors.
These are the things that should rise to the top of your mind as you face your ballot in the next few weeks.
So, when you hear Kamala Harris or her surrogates boast about “their” strong job number or “their” impressive Dow figures, remember to look past the flummery. Try to resist the media spin. If you hear something on the radio, before just believing it, ask yourself if it rings true.
They tell us “Crime is down!” Well then, why are there so many more news stories about local crimes where I live? Why are insurance rates skyrocketing in neighborhoods where the crime is off the charts?
They say that “These millions of illegal aliens are good for America!” Well then, if so, why are our schools, park district rec centers, and welfare offices unusable – because they’ve all been turned over to migrant housing – and the criminal justice system, the healthcare system, the education system, are all breaking under the crush of these unemployable 20 million? What’s good about that?
They may say, “I believe in the ambition, the aspirations, the dreams of the American people.” But where is the truth in that, when, because of their policies, it now requires double the salary it did just four years ago to buy a new house – due to the effect of high mortgage interest rates, high housing prices, and skyrocketing taxes – on both the home purchase and the purchases of everything you need to buy for that new home?
The reality is – no matter how thrilling the Dow numbers may sound at first blush – before you really start thinking about them – this Biden-Harris economy is a disaster area.
- Democrat policies under both Obama and Biden – their taunting of Putin and encouragement to consider NATO membership for Ukraine – led to the Russian war against Ukraine.
- Democrat policies under the Biden-Harris regime – unnecessary support for China’s expansionism – led to China’s cocky saber-rattling against Taiwan.
- Democrat policies under both Obama and Biden – huge financial support of Iran and a refusal to enforce stiff sanctions against the mullahs – empowered Iran’s puppets in Gaza, Yemen and Lebanon, which necessitated Israel’s defensive wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, and which have paralyzed global shipping by closing the Suez Canal.
Just as their global policies have been catastrophic, their domestic policies have been catastrophic as well.
The Biden-Harris regime caused the collapse of America’s prior status as a net exporter of energy; it has jeopardized our nation’s manufacturing presence and is rapidly killing the retail and commercial real estate markets. This regime has even attacked – maybe destroyed – women’s sports.
But it’s not just the Biden-Harris regime alone. It’s their party, because today’s Democrats are unanimous in their mindset. What they call the “intersectionality of modern progressivism” is a commitment to be unanimous on all the outrageous, unconstitutional platforms of the Left.
There were once such things as a Truman Democrat, a JFK Democrat, a Scoop Jackson Democrat.
No more.
Thanks to the commitment of intersectionality, all dissent within the party has been purged. A Kamala Harris regime will be no different on these matters – no wiser, certainly no less destructive – than the Joe Biden regime was. Because today’s Democrat politicians are the same people, with the same positions, in lock step in the same direction, like any other platoon of storm troopers.
The economy is teetering now, counting on a Trump election and a Republican landslide to stay afloat. Without these desperately-needed results on Election Day, every bubble will burst, both in and out of the marketplace.
Copyright 2024 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
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