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SHAPIRO: Yes, it’s Biden’s inflation

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Last week, America received news of yet another shocking inflation report: over the past 12 months, inflation has skyrocketed 8.5%, outpacing wage gains by 2.9%. That inflation has flooded every area of American life, from gas (up 48%) to airfare (24%) to furniture (16%) to milk (13%). Inflation is costing the average American family hundreds of dollars per month — and, as we know, inflation is a highly regressive tax, harming those at the bottom of the income spectrum the most.

For its part, the Biden administration blames Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. White House press secretary and incipient MSNBC employee Jen Psaki announced, “we expect March CPI headline inflation to be extraordinarily elevated due to Putin’s price hike,” and blamed gas prices alone for the spike. That, of course, is ludicrous. In February 2021, the month after Biden took office, the inflation rate was just 1.7%. In April 2021 it spiked to 4.2%. By May 2021, the inflation rate was 5%; it remained in that range until October 2021, when it spiked to 6.2%; it then spiked again to 6.8% in November 2021 and 7.5% in January 2022. 

In other words, the problem ain’t Putin.

It also isn’t supply chain issues alone. The core inflation rate in Europe has remained well below that of the United States; the harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP) was 5.9% in February 2022 in the Europe area, compared with 7.9% in the United States. 

So, what is the problem? The problem lies in loose monetary policy from the Federal Reserve for years on end, combined with wildly irresponsible economic policy from the Biden administration. Begin with the Federal Reserve. Between 2008 and 2015, the Federal Funds Effective Rate was essentially zero. It rose to 2.39% in May 2019, then dove back down to zero amidst the COVID-19 recession. This means that the Federal Reserve essentially subsidized borrowing and spending for years on end. 

But the problem didn’t stop there. During the COVID-19 downturn, the Federal Reserve purchased some $4 trillion in assets, injecting liquidity into the economy in the mistaken belief that the problem was lack of demand, not lack of supply. This superheated the economy; as supply chains attenuated, prices rose dramatically.

All of this was accompanied by ridiculously spendthrift policy from the Biden administration. The Trump administration, along with a bipartisan contingent in Congress, spent nearly endless amounts of money as the American economy was subjected to an artificial coma. But the Biden administration entered office with a working vaccine and COVID-19 on the wane — and then proceeded to inject trillions more in spending into the economy. In 2020, the government spent approximately $6.6 trillion in federal outlays; in 2021, the year of recovery, the government spent $7.2 trillion. 

That spending was wildly unjustifiable. With vaccines available and people going back to work, the Biden administration had a responsibility to leave the economy alone. Instead, Biden insisted on reshaping the economy according to his whim. As Ezra Klein lamented to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, “there was a reason the Biden administration wanted to run the economy hot… it felt, finally, like we were reaching people on the margins. We were putting a lot of firepower to do that… And then for that to turn into this horrifying inflation problem, which is now eating back those wage increases… I recognize the world doesn’t have to please me, but it is maddening.”

Yes, reality is maddening. But not quite as maddening as the predictable results of ignoring financial reality, then lying about it in order to blame someone else. 

Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law
School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. 

Darrell Brooks

SHAPIRO: Reality remains undefeated

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This week, a 39-year-old black man in Waukesha, Wisconsin, plowed a maroon Ford Escape into a Christmas parade of children and older women. Six people were killed and another 48 were injured. The motive of the suspect is unknown; if the media have their way, it will remain that way. The media apparently only care about why suspects commit violent acts when motives can be credited to their political enemies. 

There is one thing we do know: the suspect should not have been on the street. He had a rap sheet longer than the first five books of the Bible. His latest alleged crime took place on Nov. 5, when he was charged with resisting an officer, bail jumping, recklessly endangering safety, disorderly conduct and battery. First, he allegedly slammed the mother of his child with his fist, and then ran her over — wait for it — in a maroon Ford Escape. He was released on Friday … on $1,000 bail. Two days later, he ran his vehicle over innocent victims.

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has now opened an investigation into the low bail. But we already know just why the bail process allowed the suspect back out onto the street: equity demanded it. In May 2015, Jeffrey Toobin wrote in The New Yorker about “The Milwaukee Experiment.” The piece was a long, sycophantic love letter to John Chisholm, the District Attorney of Milwaukee County, who had embraced criminal justice policies geared toward rectifying “the racial imbalance in American prisons.” According to one of Chisholm’s admirers, “Chisholm stuck his neck out there and started saying that prosecutors should also be judged by their success in reducing mass incarceration and achieving racial equality.”

Not reducing crime. Reducing the number of people in jail — and more particularly, the number of black Americans in jail. Chisholm himself admitted the costs of his policies in 2007: “Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into a treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody? You bet. Guaranteed. It’s guaranteed to happen.”

Chisholm, of course, was right. 

San Francisco proved the same point this week when large, roving gangs began looting high-end stores. On Friday night, San Francisco’s Union Square witnessed a massive group of looters smashing and grabbing at a Louis Vuitton store; meanwhile, thieves congregated to steal product in Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, Hayward and San Jose. None of this ought to be a surprise. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced that he would end “mass incarceration” and cash bail; he stopped prosecuting shoplifting cases — in 2020, just 44% of shoplifting cases were prosecuted.

The result: stores are closing down in San Francisco thanks to the automatic surcharge of people stealing their product from the shelves.

Reality with regard to criminality isn’t all that complicated: when you free criminals unjustifiably in a misguided attempt to achieve “group equity,” innocents suffer. When you take cops off the street, freeing criminals to work their will, innocents suffer. When you refuse to prosecute crime, criminals spot an opportunity.

Voters can either continue to deny reality and pay the price, or they can wake up to the simple fact that reality always wins. Until they do the latter, the criminals — and the politicians who enable them — will be the only winners.

Ben Shapiro, 37, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com.