As the presidential election draws closer, South Florida voters — a majority of them Hispanics in Miami-Dade County — are increasingly leaning toward former President Donald Trump, believing their economic fortunes were better under his chaos management than under the steady hand of President Joe Biden.
GOP scare tactics that Biden is a socialist ring hollow, though, when you look at what his administration has accomplished in 3 ½ years despite a pandemic that began under Trump’s bizarre “Let’s inject bleach” wackiness that served only to confuse and scare most Americans.
The COVID-19 pandemic crippled not just this nation’s economy but the world’s, and Biden policies have made a huge difference. In fact, the United States has recovered from the 2020 COVID crisis and emerged as an economic leader over all other nations — leading in job creation, and even continuing to stomp on inflationary pressures that European countries continue to battle.
Yes, the facts — current economic trends that show a lowering of gas prices and inflation — are pointing in a decidedly favorable direction for Biden. And South Florida workers are doing much better than four years ago in a slew of areas, though admittedly housing costs, whether you want to own a home or rent one, remain a stubborn reminder that interest rates — guided by the independent Federal Reserve and not the White House — remain too high and the inventory of housing too low.
But in other areas, we are seeing more sunshine than cloudy skies in our neck of the woods, and Biden needs to speak more about how he plans to keep that going.
Consider gasoline prices. As the Herald reported, gas prices took a dive this week. In Miami and Fort Lauderdale, the price of a gallon of gas went down by more than 13 cents a gallon, to $3.50 on average, according to a GasBuddy survey of nearly 1,700 area gas stations. The survey found that you can pay as little as $2.35 per gallon at some stations in the Miami area.
And food costs? Good news from the U.S. Labor Department this week: Grocery prices fell in April for the first time in a year. In fact — yes, those pesky facts that keep getting in the way of the “socialist” narrative — grocery prices grew only 1.1% over the past 12 months, which is far slower than the overall national inflation rate of 3.4% in April. This is better than the target the Fed had set at 2%. The news bodes well for the Fed to lower interest rates later this year if trends continue.
The prices of milk, eggs and beef are still not what most families would want to spend, though nationally, wages — especially for working class folks — have grown at a higher rate than the cost of food, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In South Florida, inflation remains higher than the national average and wages need to catch up. As the Herald reported, South Florida had the highest inflation rate compared to the nation’s 13 largest metro areas. The silver lining is that, at 2%, Miami-Dade County’s unemployment rate was lower than Florida’s in March, according to state data.
The challenge the last three years has been the inflationary pressure that supply chain issues imposed on us (too much U.S. dependence on Chinese goods). You can’t snap your fingers and end a pandemic and its inflationary aftermath. It takes deliberate actions, such as Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, and administration policies to free up more fuel and drilling, which has created the biggest profits for Big Oil thanks to… who? Why, President Biden.
So much for Trump’s pledge to “Drill, baby, Drill!”
It’s already happening, and without hurting Florida’s pristine waters or our strong tourism sector.
Biden is missing a crucial opportunity to crow about his successes at this critical juncture, just six months away from the November election.
Every time Biden or his surrogates come to South Florida, they need to be armed with the economic figures specific to the region, and show how a free market under his steady leadership is working to help families and strengthen businesses big and small. It’s not a perfect picture yet, but it surely isn’t the scary top-down control of the economy — aka real socialism as experienced in communist Cuba or Venezuela — that Biden’s detractors paint.
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