More than 400 left-leaning economists and former policy advisers under Democratic administrations endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency despite her poor track record and the potentially detrimental effects of her economic proposals on the U.S. economy.
The endorsement was announced in an open letter, and the signatories included former deputy treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, Roger Altman, and former commerce secretary under Barack Obama, Penny Pritzker. Their endorsement claimed Vice President Harris “has a proven record of economic leadership throughout her career … In her time as Vice President, she has worked on behalf of American families to lower costs, cut taxes, raise wages …” This statement is a stark contradiction to Harris’ actual record.
In just three years, the Biden-Harris administration added a staggering $6.3 trillion to the national debt, bringing the total public debt to nearly $35 trillion as of May. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) reported that the interest payment of our national debt has surpassed government spending on national defense, Medicare, and more than “all the money spent this year on veterans, education, and transportation combined.” This is not just a problem for us, but for our children and grandchildren who will inherit this debt.
The Biden-Harris administration’s excessive spending sparked the worst inflation in four decades. Since February 2021, prices have risen close to 20 percent, and even middle-class American families are struggling, especially with skyrocketing food prices and housing inflation. No wonder inflation and our economy’s health have consistently been voters’ top concerns. It is disinformation when the Biden–Harris administration claims it inherited the inflation problem from former President Trump. As renowned economist Steven Moore pointed out, in Trump’s last four months in office, the inflation rate was merely 1.2 percent, 1.3 percent, 1.5 percent, and 1.4 percent.
The Biden-Harris administration’s job “creation” numbers have also been a point of contention. A House Budget Committee report revealed that “Nearly 72 percent of all job gains since 2021 were simply jobs that were being recovered from the pandemic, not new job creation … When adjusting for population gains, nearly 2 million more Americans are on the sidelines today than they were during the previous Administration … Real wages are down over 5 percent since President Biden entered the Oval Office.” This revelation, coupled with the Labor Department’s downward revision of the nonfarm payroll by 818,000 in August, paints a starkly different picture of the job market than the administration’s optimistic projection.
Harris’ record on the economy is bad enough, but her economic proposals will cause even more significant harm to the U.S. economy and worsen Americans’ standard of living. Her proposed $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers will exacerbate the housing inflation and make housing even less affordable for ordinary American families. Vance Grinn of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) warned that should Harris’ proposal to raise capital gains tax and tax unrealized gains become the policy, investors will “have less incentive to invest in productive assets such as stocks, real estate, or businesses. This leads to a misallocation of resources and slower economic growth.”
VP Harris’ proposal to implement price control as a remedy for food and housing inflation, a consequence of her and President Joe Biden’s policies, is a profoundly concerning economic plan. Both economic theory and the history of socialist countries such as China have demonstrated that price control disrupts the balance of supply and demand, inevitably leading to escalating prices and shortages. The most recent case in point is Argentina.
The Wall Street Journal reported that in 2020, Argentina’s then-socialist President Alberto Fernández imposed the most restrictive rent-control law in the world, hoping to keep rents affordable. Yet, the price control caused “the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Buenos Aires to cost 27 times the price of 2019.”
Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, boldly abolished most government price controls, including the rental control laws. The result? “Buenos Aires is now experiencing a rental-market boom. Landlords are eager to reintroduce their properties to the market, leading to a 170 percent increase in rental supplies. While rents have risen in nominal terms, many renters are now enjoying better deals than ever, with a 40 percent decline in the real price of rental properties when adjusted for inflation since last October.” Argentina’s transformation is a shining example of how free-market competition is the key to an abundance of supply and lower consumer prices.
It’s a curious paradox that while Argentina, a former socialist country, has embraced a free market economy, more than 400 economists in the U.S. have decided to adopt the state-controlled economic model as long as it could help Harris win the presidential election.
One of the American economists who signed Harris’ endorsement letter was Jason Furman. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama and had previously criticized some of Harris’ proposals, including the price control proposal. Yet, by signing the endorsement letter, Furman insists that Harris, once elected, will “build a strong, pro-growth economy for all Americans.”
This endorsement letter, signed by over 400 economists, brings to mind a similar event. On June 25, 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a joint letter to endorse President Joe Biden and warned against inflation risks under the second term of Trump. The letter came two days before Biden and Trump’s presidential debate, aiming to drum up support for Biden. Yet, Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance left little doubt of his mental and physical impairment and eventually led to Biden’s decision not to seek reelection under pressure from Democratic elites.
Many of these same Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a similar letter in September 2021, supporting President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion “Build Back Better” package and dismissing any concerns about inflation was “shortsighted.” The rapid rising inflations followed proved that these economists were the “shortsighted” ones. The repeated attempts at these laughable endorsements is an indictment of how our “experts” are blinded by their politics.
Since Donald Trump became president, the expert class made a significant shift, prioritizing ideology over facts, logic, reason, and truth. They have shown that facts and truth could be damned if they are perceived to be helpful to Trump. Meanwhile, the expert class has also demonstrated their willingness to promote misinformation to hurt Trump and benefit their candidate to beat Trump in an election.
Who could forget that more than 50 former intel officers insisting Hunter Biden’s lab top was Russia disinformation? The American public has learned that trusting their eyes and experiences is more reliable than having faith in our expert class. And the experts have no one else to blame but themselves for their destroyed credibility.
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