Last year UP senior fellow EJ Antoni published a shocking study on how inflation-adjusted investment performance cratered under Biden. He's updated his findings in a new UP paper. The big takeaway: the typical plan has lost between $12,000 and $23,000 in purchasing power value since Biden entered office.
2) Police Warning: Don't Wear Anything Valuable in DC
Here's one for the dystopia file: if you visit Washington, DC to petition the government for redress of grievances, don't wear fancy sneakers or - God forbid - a Rolex or carry a designer handbag.
According to DC's Fox 5 affiliate, "This all comes just a week after three students were robbed at gunpoint for their $1000 Balenciaga shoes and Jordan sneakers in Southeast, D.C."
The police recommend that when you enter the city you "avoid wearing high-end designer sneakers or other valuable items in public."
We have a better idea: hunt down the thieves and put them in jail.
The letter claims the economic plan would "lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality."
They also claimed the tariff proposals and calls for aggressive tax cuts, would "lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality" while risking a recession.
Wait! This is exactly what many in this gang of leftist economists warned of in 2016. Many of these PhDs claimed those policies would crash the stock market and plunge the economy into a deep recession.
Oops. The economy boomed – as did the stock market.
We too have skepticism on issues like high tariffs and special interest tax carve outs. But what is undeniable is that the 2016 economic agenda worked like a charm - as measured by the record-breaking $5,000 to $6,000 gain in real incomes for average families. Oh. And someone tell these ivory-towered economists that inflation and income inequality went DOWN, not up.
4) Meet The State Versions of Lina Khan "Trustbusters"
Aggressive anti-business regulators dominate Biden's FTC, FCC and SEC. Any company that makes a healthy prospect is a suspect monopolist. Now the state regulatory thugs are getting into the game of suing companies for being too profitable.
In recent years, Colorado lawmakers gave their attorney general more authority to enforce antitrust laws; Washington state lawmakers stiffened penalties for antitrust violations; and Delaware legislators retooled their regulations.
The Biden Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have targeted Apple, Amazon, Google, RealPage, and Visa with a slew of actions on mergers and alleged monopolistic behavior. Many blue states joined these cases.
New York State Senator Michael Gianaris, who joined with AOC to block Amazon's plan to build a second headquarters in New York City, wants to encourage more activity like this. His bill aims to "police abuses of power by dominant firms." He says, "it would revolutionize the way we take on these dominant players."
However, this would lead to higher consumer prices, since the fight against "dominance" is often a disguised way to prop up inefficient competitors and slow down innovation.
5) Ranked-Choice Voting Is the Real Threat to Democracy
Progressive election reformers have put ranked-choice voting on the ballot in a half dozen states next month.
This is a step backward and we have solid evidence that it is a deceptive scheme.
Steve Forbes, a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity, reports in the video below that ranked-choice "leads to voter confusion and undemocratic results. In Maine, for instance, a Democratic Party candidate for Congress was declared the winner, even though he received fewer votes than his Republican opponent."
This system has resulted in discarded ballots, widespread voting errors, suspect recounts, and diminished voter confidence. In 2022, one large county in California certified the wrong winner in a school board race.
Many cities and counties that have adopted ranked choice voting have now thrown it out - either of their own accord or because of citizen-led petitions. Alaska voters will decide this November on getting rid of their state's system.
But progressives are still pushing voters in Colorado, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon to adopt a version of the discredited idea. If voters in those states reject the idea and Alaska repeals its version, only Maine will be left with a statewide ranked-choice system. The only other places to have it would be a few progressive cities, the biggest being New York City and San Francisco. That should tell you everything.
