It doesn’t take a master’s degree in economics to understand that prices are up in every sector of the economy. The economy under Joe Biden is nickel-and-diming us at every turn, and Americans can see past the smoke and mirrors that the White House is using to try to convince us that everything is fine.
The federal government’s measure of price increases, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), has consistently shown that inflation isn’t going away. The most recent CPI report indicates a 3.2% increase in prices from Feb. 2023 to Feb. 2024. That’s a significant increase, but it only shows the increase over a rolling 12 months.
To get a clearer picture of what Bidenflation looks like, we need to compare prices between now and when Biden took office. That’s what TIPPinsights did, and the results show you that Bidenflation isn’t just worse than the White House wants you to believe — it’s worse than you might have realized.
“We developed the TIPP CPI, a metric that uses February 2021, the month after President Biden’s inauguration, as its base to measure the rate of change,” TIPPinsights explains. “All TIPP CPI measures are anchored to the base month of February 2021, making it exclusive to the economy under President Biden’s watch.”
The rationale is that a year-over-year comparison looks at current prices next to already inflated prices, which masks the effect of inflation over time. The TIPP CPI measures Bidenflation as a whopping 18%. TIPPinsights broke down various sectors of the economy in a similar way that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does in its CPI.
Related: Welcome to Nickel-and-Dime Nation
Here’s a sample (emphasis in the original):
Food prices increased by 20.6% under Biden compared to only 2.2% as per BLS CPI, a difference of 18.5 points.
TIPP CPI data show that Energy prices increased by 29.6%. But, according to the BLS CPI, energy prices improved by 1.9%. The difference between the two is a whopping 31.5 points.
The Core CPI measures the price increase for all items, excluding food and energy. In the year-over-year measure, the Core TIPP CPI is 16.5% compared to 3.8% BLS CPI, a 12.8-point difference.
Further, gasoline prices have increased by 29.9% since President Biden took office, whereas the BLS CPI shows that gasoline prices have improved by 3.9%, a difference of 33.8 points.
Americans have noticed these differences in prices. Two recent TIPP polls have shown this phenomenon. One shows that 84% of American adults are concerned about inflation — 51% “very concerned” and 33% “somewhat concerned.” It’s the 25th consecutive month that over 80% of people surveyed have expressed concerns about inflation.
The other survey shows only 18% of respondents indicating that their wages are keeping up with inflation. That compares with 53% who say their wages haven’t matched inflation, while 20% say the question isn’t applicable or that they’re unemployed, and 9% say they’re not sure.
How are Americans coping with Bidenflation? It’s not pretty. The Wall Street Journal recently covered the phenomenon of people withdrawing money from their 401(K)s to make ends meet. Millions of Americans are taking second jobs, and retirees are reentering the workforce.
Worst of all, credit card debt is skyrocketing. A February report from RealClearPolitics indicated that credit card debt has ballooned to over $1 trillion nationally, a significant jump. These are not the signs of a healthy economy, no matter what spin the Biden administration wants to put on it.