The Biden Economy | Andy Puzder

uh good afternoon everybody Tim thank you very much for that introduction it's a delight to be here and really an honor to even be asked I I want to thank you all for coming and staying to the end uh I I want to get right to my presentation because it's it's important for me to hear what you have to say about the economy what questions you have my wife tells me I have two problems one problem is I don't listen to people and the other problem I don't remember what I can't remember what she said there was another problem I see you didn't think I'd be funny did you you thought this is going to be on the economy all right all right since this is a Hillsdale event I'm going to discuss the Biden economy economy much as I would in a college Economist classroom this will be a shorter Reader's Digest version of a few lectures but but I'll attempt to present facts interspersed with some political commentary uh mostly because my wife says I can't help myself so there's going to be political comedy maybe that was the second thing she said all right I'm going to cover four topics on the Biden economy the first is where we are second is why does this feel so much worse than we're being told it is third how did we get here and fourth is there anything President Biden can do at this point so first where are we well I'm going to tell you something that just about everybody on Wall Street knows despite what you read in the financial press the Biden administration's economic policies are driving us into a recessionary ditch now this is what happens when a president's economic policies are designed to accomplish leftist political goals such as advancing radical radical climate agenda or increasing government dependence rather than growing the economy and creating Prosperity let's see if I can run this thing apparently not there we go in a recent Wall Street Journal survey of 23 large financial institutions that do business directly with the Federal Reserve two-thirds predicted a U.S recession in 2023 two more predicted a recession in 2024 only five predicted that we would avoid a recession in 2022 2023 and 2024 and even they only predicted we'd have a half a percent in economic growth in GDP growth which is you know it is way below the 2.1 percent average over the last 20 years but is also dangerously close to what traditionally was considered a recession which was two quarters of negative economic growth that is until the financial press changed that before the midterm so that President Biden would look good after we had two quarters of negative economic growth in any event for the American people this all means stagnant declining standards of living fewer job opportunities lower wages and increased poverty then that's kind of a cool side the people that do my slides for me they think they're very artistic I told them it was an economic lecture in any event and it will mean increased poverty overall a far less less vibrant and far less prosperous society and this is where we are this is we're on the verge of a very serious recession all right second why does it feel so much worse that we're being told why does it actually feel like we're on the verge of a recession even though we're being told that we're not well our current economic situation is particularly disheartening as it comes on the heels of the Trump era which once again proved once again opened our eyes to true American potential when we have low taxes reduced regulation and a bountiful supply of domestic energy now everybody particularly minority and low-wage earners reap the benefits of the Trump economy you may recall there were abundant job opportunities increasing wages historic highs in family income historic lows in the poverty rate and the unemployment rate a growing labor force it's now shrinking and declining income inequality all without inflation now let's look at a couple of those metrics just to see how good things were back in the back in the day let's look at median family income and poverty let's start with median family income it grew in 2019 which is the last year before the pandemic it grew in nearly 73 thousand dollars that was not only a 6.4 percent increase over 2018 but it was also the largest yearly increase going back to 1967. it was 45 percent more growth in one year than the Obama at Biden Administration achieved in eight years there was in under Trump median family income group four thousand six hundred dollars in one year under Obama and Biden it grew three thousand two hundred dollars in eight years now contrary to what you may have heard the economic benefits of this increased family income were really widespread this wasn't something where just rich people were getting richer every racial group benefited blacks Hispanics Asians and white Americans all hit new record highs new record high income levels while median family increase income increased for whites 5.7 percent remember it increased 6.4 on average so whites were below the average at 5.7 it grew 7.9 percent for blacks 7.1 percent for Hispanic Americans and 10.6 for Asian Americans and as for those Democratic talking points about how the Trump tax cuts benefited only the rich well they were false as incomes grew in 2019 the poverty rate plummeted 1.3 percentage point to a new 60-year low of 10.5 percent this chart goes back to 1959 and as you can see just to the left of the 11.6 which is the most recent poverty rate under Biden you can see that dipped down to the 10 percent line by 10.5 percent uh that was the low poverty rate uh it's low historical poverty rate which occurred under President Trump it's the lowest it's ever been since the since the government started reporting a poverty rate this lifted 4.1 million people out of poverty and just for comparison purposes under Obama and Biden the number of people living in poverty decreased or increased not decreased but increased 787 000 people during the eight years that they were in office so 4.1 million people decrease in poverty under Trump an 800 000 person increase in eight years with Obama and Biden so where is the poverty rate today as you can see it's at 11.6 percent it's bounced back up despite all of the government largesse during the pandemic and again the decrease in poverty under Trump disproportionately favored blacks Hispanics and Asians while the poverty rate for whites decreased eight tenths of a percent again below the 1.3 percentage point average for blacks it fell two percentage points Hispanics 1.8 and Asians 2.8 look 2019 should be remembered as the year of the worker and that progress didn't come from mandated wage increases empowered unions racial reparations oppressive climate regulation tax increases or any other misguided government efforts to redistribute wealth and impose economic equality rather working-class Americans of all colors saw their circumstances materially improve in 2019 because of economic freedom justice occurred in the 1980s under President Reagan this is probably the only group I could ask this question to and I might have a few people raise their hands but was any were any of you present in 1977 when Ronald Reagan gave his whatever happened to free enterprise speech at Hillsdale College at the Von miser's lecture nobody I tell you if you have if you haven't heard that speech oh we have somebody all right if you if you weren't there you haven't heard it pull it up on the internet and read it you'll much of what I'm going to say today is inspired by what's in that speech and it was an incredible incredible economic speech but today to get back to reality our prospects are dimming primarily due to a decline in economic freedom driving rampant inflation since March of 2021 the Consumer Price Index that's the average change in prices paid by consumers for goods and services has surged as we all know inflation is dramatically increasing and this is what this chart shows now this chart isn't percentage increases this is the actual dollars that they base the percentages on so when Biden's out there saying you know inflation's coming down inflation's coming well it's not coming down it keeps going up and the reason for that is that it's just increasing at a somewhat slower rate the FED looks for inflation to be about two percent we're now at 6.4 percent and of course under Biden at one point it hit nine percent so it is better than it would the worst month under Biden but it's still not coming down and you can see when you break out on the right hand side we we broke out what's happened with the Consumer Price Index or inflation uh under Biden and it's a it's a horrific Story the chart on the left goes back to 1947. now you can see what's happened this is a phenomenal and phenomenal and important increase now the FED has to take some credit for this going up they didn't react in a timely manner when inflation started to set in remember they called it transitory you know I looked transitory to you anyway they called it transitory but since last year they have been taking action increasing interest rates at really the fastest Pace since the 1980s now looking at this you might think that jump that bump is the 1980s this but this chart only goes back to 2013. that bump is the Trump Administration when there was virtually no inflation it was about two percent it was right at the fed's average but with a republican in office they decided that they needed to raise interest rates and fight all this incredible economic growth we were experiencing you can see that before Trump took office there was no increase in interest rates those were the Biden years and then it went down to really zero during the pandemic and then stayed at zero until they couldn't ignore inflation anymore and the red line is the increase uh since since last year under President Biden now according to the minutes of the fed's December meeting so just a couple months ago it intends to continue raising rates because inflation's proven quote more persistent and widespread than previously anticipated I guess what's when they were anticipating would be transitory that's according to Jerome Powell now no matter what you're hearing in the Press the recession That Wall Street financial institutions are forecasting the one they told the Wall Street Journal they thought was coming is inevitable If the Fed has to continue increasing interest rates and in fact this morning uh the FED came out and said they're going to continue increasing interest rates because they need to get this inflation inflation under control so how did this happen but after the great Trump economy years all we needed to do to create Dynamic economic growth was get back to the policies we had in place and watch the economy boom now I wrote two pamphlets during the pandemic they they call them broadsider from a con encounter books and they say they said exactly that one was entitled getting America back to work that was in I think June or July of 2020 and the second one a few months later was it's time to let America get back to work because I was getting frustrated but that obviously didn't happen America didn't get back to work we didn't have those kinds of economic policies and why is that well coming out of the pandemic we really knew two things first we knew people had a lot of money you know which would drive the demand for goods demand for goods would go way up personal savings from 1959 to 1920 or through 2021 are on this chart and you can see going back to 1959 the savings rate for Americans the savings rate for Americans was was pretty level and then during the pandemic obviously it it surged it was unprecedented you know by the way keep in mind the left-hand side of this chart because I'm going to show you a more updated chart shortly and I want you to keep in mind just how consistent the savings rate was going back to 1959. but this chart shows you've got this huge surge Now The Surge wasn't a mystery the federal government handed out five trillion dollars during the pandemic and people really had very few places to spend all this money they really couldn't go out nobody wanted to travel nobody wanted to go to restaurants nobody wanted to go shopping everybody was kind of staying home because they didn't want to get the virus so by early 2021 and that's where this chart ends early 2021 you can see the savings rate is significantly higher than it has ever been so you knew people had a bunch of money demand was going to be high people had cash what did we what else did we know well second we knew fewer people were working back there we go we knew fewer people were working and really if you tried to do anything around your house back then you knew that right first of all you couldn't get anybody to come do anything and then if they wanted to come do something and they had to buy a you know a new sink or something to put in for you that nobody was making sinks you couldn't get anything people were unable to work businesses were unable to anticipate future demand and so there were a lot fewer people employed a lot fewer people working so obviously when Biden took office in new two things people had a lot of money which was going to drive demand and the supply of goods was going to be low because really you can't make a good you can't deliver Goods if you don't have people working so you knew demand would be high and Supply would be low now as we all know inflation is a result of demand exceeding Supply even if think the Trump years when demand was high and Supply was high we didn't have inflation because there wasn't there were enough Goods to meet the demand so prices didn't surge up but when demand exceeds Supply as it obviously was going to you knew you knew you were going to have an inflationary surge well what what would you do if you were coming in as president you knew not enough people were working so you had Supply problems you knew people had a lot of money so you're going to have increased demand what would you do well I'll tell you what you wouldn't do you wouldn't give people more money juicing demand through welfare programs that discourage work thereby further reducing Supply you know that that seems it seems simple enough but but Democrats didn't get it see Democrats thought and and Biden in his uh economic team in particular they really they could have they really could have just sat back and with Trump's 2019 policies in place watch the market correct itself and that they could have taken credit for the rebound

Channel: Hillsdale College

Views: 17,046

Keywords: hillsdale, politics, constitution, equality, liberty, freedom, free speech, lecture, learn, america

Id: VU7MTJcypGE

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 30 2023