* furious cognitive dissonance noises

No truer statement then this.

Bidenomics is working... just like they are gaslighting you about Kamala's popularity... LOL

Bidenomics works so well that at its height most Americans are a $400 unexpected expense away from bankruptcy according to none other than Camel.

She also did claim prices were lower under Trump

If socialists understood economics, they would not be socialists.

History and economics are to be avoided at all costs. They are hate speech.

"Inflation is caused by price gouging," said no economist ever!

How would you know if you've never bothered to look?

https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/

I minored and economics. What causes inflation is pretty basic shortage or excessive money supply.

False.

Perhaps more than a 'pretty basic' understanding of inflation is in order?

There are many other causes including: currency devaluation, fiscal policies such as tariffs and trade wars, wage-price spiraling from low unemployment, and of course anticipatory corporate profiteering and price gouging.

Why was "anticipatory corporate profiteering and price gouging" not a thing until Biden? No one believes price gouging causes inflation, not even you. You are much better at doublethink than I am.

Corporate profits accounted for 11% of price increases for the 40 years before 2020, but in excess of 55% since 2020, so no, it wasn't a thing until Biden.

So why now? Because Trump spend an entire administration setting it up to work that way - from his 2017 Tax Scam to the expansion of the M2 by $6T (over 30%) in his 4 years, $4T of that in 2020 alone.

But of course none of his free money reopened the economy - it admittedly kept people from starving when they lost their jobs and their companies shut down, but until the vaccines rolled out in 2021, we were effectively dead in the water.

When it did reopen, inflation hit first for the traditional reasons - little supply and a lot of money, but the M2 supply started to shrink in 2022, and goods and services returned to pre-pandemic levels, yet prices continued to increase for more than a year thereafter even as borrowing money remained cheap - which is that "anticipatory corporate profiteering" I was talking about.

How come groceries keep going up? How come my insurance doubled? I can't afford 4 more years of this crap.

Price. gouging.

The supply chain is operational, the shelves are full, and the M2 supply has declined by about a trillion dollars since its peak in 2022.

Wages are largely stagnant, so it isn't a wage-price spiral...

What's left? That's right, corporate profiteering.

A strong economy without price controls sounds like a scam to the working class.

You don't need price controls when people are working good jobs and making money, you don't need price controls when you are not waging war on energy, driving transportation cost through the roof. Price controls are the scam.

Our "war on energy" has produced more oil than at any point during the Trump administration - in fact, more American oil companies went bankrupt under Trump than any other American president in history.

Funny how your screenshot of that story has the save dialog open so it covers up the warning that this story is more than 2 years old...

Ignoring that, did the author's dire predictions of lower production come true? Of course not - we're pumping 2.5 million -more- barrels of oil per day than when he made that statement.

Hell, it wasn't even true when he made the statement, as we were pumping nearly a million barrels a day more when he wrote that than we were when Joe was inaugurated.

The date is clearly on the screen shot, I didn't try to hide it. Gas is high as hell and these policies continue. Camela will continue the energy war if she is elected and the prices under her will skyrocket. She will be 10x worse then Sleepy Joe.

When that article was written, the average price for a gallon of gas was $4.87.

That average is currently $3.38.

Blackmon's ability to foresee the future is batting a 0%.

Gas prices go up and down - it's the nature of markets.

When this article was written at the end of March, the average price per gallon was $3.52.

Today the average is $3.38.

Again, rolling out predictions that have already been shown to be false isn't quite the argument you seem to think it is.

What he was saying in the artical is that the averages we see are going to continue to get higher and higher, yes prices go up and down but the averages are what matters. We need to be producing 3x the amount of oil to bring prices and the averages down. or else summer after summer you are going to see higher and higher averages.

Yes, that is what he's saying, but no, that's not what's happened nor will it.

If we produced 3x the amount of oil as we do right now, it would sit unprocessed alongside the current excess or sold to overseas customers because there isn't remotely enough refining capacity to handle that much crude. In fact, there hasn't been enough capacity for almost a decade, which is why Congress lifted the crude export ban in 2015.

That said, gas prices will ALWAYS go up in summer compared to the rest of the year because it's formulated with a lower amount of butane so it's less likely to evaporate in high temperatures.

The question is if gas is more expensive this summer than last, or the one before it, and the answer is no in both cases - this August the average price is 40 cents cheaper than 2023, and 75 cheaper than in 2022.

BTw OPublic works have been used to pull countries out of great depressions before, such as Roosevelt with the WPA.

Careful - talking about public works as something that actually works will get you labeled a communist in these parts.

You build more refining plants, more oil is refined , cheaper prices. We can lower the averages instead of them rising. Same with food , or anything else , you increase production, fill the market, lower the prices. More is sold , more people have what they need. 3.38 on average is not good, its better than 4 but it can be lowered.

I mean, if you could if you could convince investors to finance them, but between the industry imploding under Trump in 2020 and the fact that ROI is at least a decade away on any refinery project, it's extremely unlikely regardless of who is elected in November.

And that's the real problem here - Republican 'solutions' are rarely more than pipe dreams (pun intended).

ACA wasn't exactly public works that benefit everyone, that is more stealing from the middle class to pay for the poor's health insurance. The aca made thousands of working class people's health insurance unaffordable. What I envision is massive public works that employs people from ditch diggers to engineer techs , maintenance jobs for 10s of thousands of people for decades to come. When You employ millions of people, you don't need programs like the ACA because everyone has top of the line health insurace because they can afford it. If democrats actually wanted to help people , and they don't, they would work with republicans and provide ideas that involve production and fabrication, construction, and maintenance. Those 4 things can and will get America spinning like a top again.

Except it absolutely was, and is extremely popular as long as you don't use the O-name when talking about it to Republicans.

The problem, as I pointed out, is that both parties are corporatist, and so they tried to solve the problem through regulations and revenue for the corporations that sell insurance and provide healthcare, whereas what needed to happen was to revoke the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 that Nixon signed that allowed profiteering on healthcare in the first place.

The solution you're describing sounds more like central planning and direct employment of millions of Americans by the government - in other words, actual communism.

I guess it has hints of communism, but I think peying people to work is far better than simply paying people through welfare. Public work benefits people in general. So, not exactly communism because they get paid but hints of it, sure.

It's collectivism, which means it's somewhere between socialism and communism depending on whether it's compulsory or not.

But you're correct - public programs do benefit people, businesses, and society in general though, which is why our nation has increasingly provided them over the years. Social security and welfare do a fairly good job of keeping those who are unable to work from starving or dying from exposure, roads, highways, interstates, railways, and air traffic control all allow people, goods, and services to move freely and safely around our nation, and public servants from police and firefighters to teachers and librarians are investments that ensure our children are prepared to work, and have a reasonable expectation they'll be able to enjoy the value earned from that work.

So the question is, if collectivism can and does provide us with all of these benefits, why is it a boogeman instead of just a hammer in our tool box next to the socket wrench of capitalism?

What it comes down to is combining the best parts of capitalism with the best parts of communism, One doesn't work without the other. In a nation of 350 million people if you don't have public safety nets like Medicaid and medicare , people will suffer, But capitalism is how we lift ourselves out of poverty through hard work, that is from experience. Both have good parts , but of course humans will never get it right.

It doesn't matter who is in charge neither party thinks big enough. We could be enacted public works that would employ thousands of people, irrigation systems in areas that are susceptible to forest fires, pumping systems to move water from high flood areas, Water purification systems to move sea water , If America wanted to really push its limits , we could make our deserts, gardens, things that would benefit America, our future, and the future for generations to come.. but when you value diversity over anything else.. nothing will ever get done.

It isn't that the parties don't think big enough, its that they're corporatist, so the only way they could conceive of doing those things would be through subsidies of private corporations.

That's why it's so ridiculous when the glue eaters call Democrats "communists" and "socialists" - even when they legitimately try to implement policies that will improve people's lives, like ACA, it ends up being a boondoggle for corporate donors.