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The Trump Administration

Just pennies, not impoverishment?

Had worst inflation in 40 years under previous administration, but now we are worried about pennies?
 
Commonsensical to most all. No?
Actually - no. There are two main schools of thought regarding the inflation experienced during the Biden administration. One school is the Larry Summers thesis that social spending - direct stimulus payments to citizens during the pandemic - was the main cause of inflation. Well, that becomes an issue because two of the three stimulus payments occurred during the Trump administration. Look it up. Another argument against this school of thought is that inflation was a world-wide issue, even in countries that did not provide their citizens with stimulus payments.

Personally, I believe the other school of thought called "Team Transitory" as espoused by Paul Krugman and others. The economy - being a mixture of spending on goods and services - got out of whack because people cut back heavily on services spending like going out to eat, entertainment, dry cleaning, etc. When consumers had a bunch of "extra" money on hand due to reduced services spending, they stated buying an unprecedented number of goods. This created shortages, shipping rates went up, etc. Krugman argued - during the pandemic and after - that inflation would come back down once the goods versus services spending got back to its normal levels. And it has.

So this is why your comment strikes me as a bit flippant. If you're with Summers and don't acknowledge that Trump also bears responsibility, you're not accurately assigning blame assuming you think inflation is someone's fault. I personally don't blame either Trump or Biden - I blame the pandemic. Krugman acknowledges he thought inflation would abate much sooner than it did, but still believes the main cause was the imbalance between goods and services spending.

Personally, I think the common sense thing to do is read varying viewpoints and reach a conclusion from there. In this case I'm largely with the guy who has a Nobel Prize in economics.
 
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