WG Discussion Points: Serious Times Demand Serious Ideas
WG Discussion Points | David Winston
August 30, 2024
Kamal Harris' first foray into economic policy was panned as unserious and full of gimmicks. Even the Washington Post said she "squandered the moment with populist gimmicks." Her attempt at inflation solutions led with price gouging, met with eyerolls by most economists. Obama economist Jason Furman called it "not sensible policy... The biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality."
Washington has declared victory over inflation and set its sights on a rate cut. But for most Americans, inflation is not a political talking point. It is a serious economic difficulty with a lasting impact. The cumulative rate of inflation since the beginning of the Biden term is over 20%.
In our latest Winning the Issues survey (July 23-25), we took a fresh look at how voters are coping with inflation. Our last look at this question was in September 2022 when the year-over-year inflation was 8.2% compared to today (2.9%). This was shortly after the peak of 9.1% in June of 2022. What we found was that even though the inflation rate has moderated from the 2022 peak, there hasn't been any improvement in how voters are dealing with it two years later. In fact the percentage saying they have adjusted well has decreased from 19% to 15%. Most notably, there has been a slight uptick in the "difficult" category going from 36% to 43%. This puts over half the country (56%) saying inflation has been either difficult or catastrophic, compared to 52% in 2022.
