By ERICK-WOODS ERICKSON
By every objective measure, the economic is defying expectations and is really good.
The unemployment rate is at 3.6%, which is virtually full employment. People 25-54 are working at a higher rate than any time in the last decade. The economy grew by more than two percent. Inflation has trended down. The Biden Team wants credit.
But most Americans do not feel it. They do not feel like the economy is benefiting them. They feel left behind. If you live in the corridors of power in DC, New York, or LA, of course you feel it. That’s where the Fortune 500 dwells. But out in the heartland, the middle class and poor of America do not feel the good times rolling for them.
This is not a matter of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It’s a matter of the rich making sure the poor cannot get off the social safety net. There is a message here in search of a messenger among the presidential candidates.
In the United States today, the Democrats want you out of your cheap internal combustion engine car into a battery powered vehicle that weights too much, is smaller, and does not go as far. Oh, and it costs a lot more.
To get your children educated, you must either quit your job and homeschool or pay for private school because the public education your tax dollars pay for is going to gender unicorns and gay porn in elementary school libraries, instead of education — and that is only when the schools are allowed open.
Small businesses are nothing. Big business is king. Wall Street gets bailed out while Main Street goes bankrupt. David cannot even get close to Goliath to sly him because the Democrats have surrounded Goliath with lawyers, lobbyists, and regulators. Many Republicans have been complicit.
It’s not that the poor are getting poorer. It’s that the poor and middle class, every time they try to get off the social safety net, are shoved back on it by the Democrats, bureaucrats, and the Fortune 500. They want compliant worker bees, not innovators and entrepreneurs who can compete. Have a great idea? Good luck fighting the EPA, OSHA, and the litigators who will sue you claiming patent infringement.
Build a business that is successful and thriving and watch how, when your business grows, the IRS pokes more, the regulators prod more, and the bigger competitors use their lobbyists to carve out protections from themselves. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, funded through an agencies out of reach of Congress, was designed to fight for consumers, but instead harasses small banks while ignoring the big banks. All of government is aligned against David in favor of Goliath. Goliath is now too big to fail and David needs to be stoned to protect Goliath.
The land of opportunity has become the land of oligopoly. Challenge it and get sued and regulated out of business. Challenge the cultural elite and they will use the media to crush you.
Look at the new movie Song of Freedom. CNN, MSNBC, and various outlets have disparaged it based not on the content of the movie, but on the views of the lead actor in the movie. Al Sharpton gets a TV show, Tom Cruise gets a hit movie with no mention of the abusive cult in which he exists as a demi-god, but God help Jim Caviezel. Had he raped actresses, he’d be better treated. Let’s not forget Harvey Weinstein’s behaviors were so well known that the TV show Entourage based a horrible character on him and for the longest time the elite bowed to him, despite the common knowledge of his behaviors.
Now, if you don’t want your kid lured into transitioning or educated in the anti-science cult of transgenderism, you are labeled a bigot, harassed, and your kids are indoctrinated anyway without your knowledge.
Then there is crime. Daniel Penny has been charged with manslaughter for stepping up to protect people on a New York subway. This came only a few years after a man opened fire on the New York subway. That man should have been in prison, but the DA didn’t want to charge him harshly for his prior crime. After Penny protected the people on the subway, one prominent left wing commentator argued that no one expects to die on the subway, but you do expect to get accosted by homeless people. The left has given up on law and order. They have defined deviancy down. When you point out people do not feel safe in cities, they prefer to argue that actually, small town America is far less safe and you are a racist bigot if you disagree. Police are bad and criminals are victims of white supremacy.
The costs of living in America have gone up. Your groceries are more expensive. Gas is more expensive. Your utility prices are going up while the power grid is less reliable. You can’t get a gas stove if you want one. Your dishwasher takes three hours to wash dishes.
But if you complain about any of it you’re accused of hating the planet.
The cost of woke is too much a burden for too many Americans, degrading their schools and making their cities less safe. The cost of living is too much. It is all related to an elite who want you to eat bugs while they fly private. You may not care about them, but they care deeply about you — so deeply they want to control you and your culture and price you out of a comfortable living.
They get to wine and dine in closed restaurants during lock down and God have mercy on your soul if you went to or watched a UFC fight with Donald Trump present.
Again, this is not about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. This is about the rich getting richer by ensuring no one else can even try. They and their friends in the press have given up on the idea of an ever expanding pie for all Americans to share and have decided to restrict access to the pie by limiting educational opportunity, job opportunity, and innovation opportunity.
Someone somewhere could carry this message to victory. The man who tried in 2016 failed to fix the system. He and his best people were no match because he was too easily distracted and had no real vision. Perhaps someone else with real vision could try.
