Why is everything so expensive? It’s a foremost question on voters’ minds this 2024 election season. According to the WSJ’s opinion columnist Allysia Finley, the answer is that the Biden administration has embraced too many policies that fuel inflationary forces throughout our economy.

As of May for example, the Biden White House has forgiven $160 billion in student loans, affecting 4.6 million borrowers, while overall government spending is now some 50 percent higher than it was before the pandemic.

A few other key metrics to consider:

• As of March the inflation rate stands at 3.5 percent. This is down from the recent high of 9.1 percent in 2022, but still above the 2.3 percent figure in the last pre-pandemic month of February 2020. Since April 2020, the cost of living has risen 22.3 percent. Since April 2019, cost of living has risen 22.7 percent while wages have risen 26.4 percent, meaning almost all of American’s wage gains have been eaten up by inflation. 
  
  
• For every month from April 2021 to January 2023, inflation outpaced wage growth. That means that for nearly two years, even as folks’ incomes increased, their paychecks weren’t going as far when it came to meeting their costs of living, from housing to gas to groceries. Over the past year, wage growth has begun to outpace inflation again, with wage growth now standing at 4.7 percent versus 3.5 percent inflation.
  
  
• Between February 2020 and April 2024, the national debt ballooned from $23.4 trillion to $34.6 trillion – a nearly 50 percent increase in only four years.