by Will Kessler
Just to maintain the same standard of living that Americans had at the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term, households have to spend an additional $11,434 per year, according to CBS News.
Since January 2021, when Biden first took office, inflation has risen 17%, far outpacing the 2% per year that the Federal Reserve aims for, while average hourly wages have only increased 13.6%, according to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee’s (JEC) state inflation tracker. As a result, more Americans reported that they are struggling financially than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic as persistent inflation continues to take its toll, according to CBS News.
“Food costs and basic costs are up more than other costs,” Gene Ludwig, chairman of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, told CBS News. “Putting on a Thanksgiving dinner costs the same if you’re a lower- or upper-income American, but for a lower-income American it’s a bigger portion of your spending.”
Inflation peaked at 9.1% year-over-year in June 2022, remaining elevated but decelerating to 3.2% in October. In an attempt to quell inflation, the Fed raised its federal funds rate to a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, the highest point in 22 years, after 11 rate hikes since March 2022.
The price increases related to groceries have culminated in a 26% rise in the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner since the beginning of Biden’s term, making it the most expensive in history. The price of a turkey, measured through the index for uncooked poultry excluding chicken, increased by 31.2% in the time frame.
Many economists have pointed to Biden’s high-spending policies as one of the reasons for rising prices and high inflation. Biden signed the American Rescue Plan in March 2021, which added $1.9 trillion in new spending, while the Inflation Reduction Act, signed in August 2022, approved $750 billion in new spending.
States like Colorado and Utah got the worst of inflation, with costs rising $14,995 and $14,551 since Biden took office, respectively, while Oklahoma and Maine only saw increases of $8,869 and $8,650, respectively, according to the JEC.
The nonpartisan Leading Economic Index, which takes an aggregate of a number of key economic components to determine the health of the U.S. economy, predicts that the country will enter a recession soon and that real gross domestic product will only increase by 0.8% in 2024.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Will Kessler is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
