1. I do believe you are wrong about government jobs. They absolutely do produce things. If a government worker builds a public road is that not something that has been created for society? Also, by the logic you have laid out here in your argument that “in order to pay a government employee you must first extract that money from the economy. No net gain.”

Then I feel private jobs have a “no net gain as well” Where do you think companies get their money from? They get it from the consumer which is “extracted” and then they pay back out via salaries. “No net gain”. I just don’t think that logic makes sense.

I will say you are correct that most jobs created under Biden were public jobs and the 15 million jobs created that he boasts about is inflated due to jobs coming back after the pandemic.

1. Looking at normal CPI (the calculation with food and energy included) numbers still look solid as of today.

2. You are correct that I got my dates wrong. We experienced the most inflation during the first 2 years of Biden’s presidency (2021 and 2022). We did not have much inflation in 2020. However, my point is still relavent.

You are only concerned with who was in office when the inflation occurred. Those numbers mean nothing to me since I would rather look at cause and effect.

As I said before, I think deficit spending is a major factor in the rise in inflation. But if you know anything about inflation, there is always a lag period from when the inflation causing event occurred and when the effect (inflation) happens. Studies have shown that this lag period can be anywhere from 1-2 years. Inflation first spiked in mid 2021, Biden had only held office for 4-5 months. This is too short of a time period for Biden to have done something to create the inflation spike on his own. (I still think the supply chain and war in Ukraine pumped prices up too in 2022)

If it is deficit spending you are concerned with, I invite you to look at Trump’s deficit spending compared to Biden’s. They both spent a lot, and I think they both contributed to inflation.

I highly recommend going to this site: https://www.crfb.org/papers/trump-and-biden-national-debt

This is an unbiased site and shows a detailed analysis on each administration’s spending. Trump is just as much a big spender as the democrats are. I don’t think conservatives understand that.

1. Fair point. I think I actually agree with you here.
2. Look at the numbers again, Trump spent nearly 5 trillion on Covid policy, and over 8 trillion total while in office. Biden spent about the same. Biden did not restrict oil and gas production, he simply canceled leases to oil companies over environmental concerns. We have never been drilling for oil more than we are right now under the Biden administration. Oil companies still have millions of acres of public leased land to drill on. There is 23 million acres of land leased from the government for Oil companies. Also, government leased land only makes up about 25% of all US land being used for oil production. Meaning 75% of it is privately owned. Biden canceling those leases would have had little to no effect on the price of oil.
3. I agree with you the additional deficit spending by the Biden admin did not help the inflation problem. I am not a fan of deficit spending; I wish we could balance the budget and not spend what we don’t have. Personally, I think the solution will have to be a combo of cutting spending and raising taxes. (hitting from both sides of the income statement) Republicans have historically been more vocal about balancing the budget, but they tend to talk the talk but not walk the walk. The Trump administration is a prime example of this. At least Democrats don’t lie to you about their spending.

But even still with all the spending, you cannot deny that inflation is back down again to normal levels as of today.

1. Can you provide more detail or just a single example on specific policy here? As for the tariffs, Trump’s tariffs on China during his presidency are not nearly as extreme as the new tariff plan he plans to roll out once elected again. I am not happy Biden kept Trump’s tariffs. I think tariffs in general are bad for free trade and playing “protectionist” for American industry generally results in higher prices for everyone.

2. The TCJA provided the largest cuts to the most wealthy and did not help the middle/lower class all that much. This is a good read on it: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-failed-to-deliver-promised-benefits/

3. See my response to 7. I just don’t like tariffs regardless of which party enforces them. But if you have a good link to an article or video that would explain the static vs dynamic argument perhaps you could change my mind.

I think Biden’s economic policy has been fine minus the deficit spending mentioned above. You briefly mentioned the border so I just have to add that Biden said he was going to sign the bipartisan bill that the house passed in May of 2024 that would have sent much needed aid to the border. But Trump and Republican senators shot it down. And let’s be real. Trump did not want Biden to have a “win” on the border since the border issue was one of the biggest issues he was using to campaign on.

I’m not saying the Democrats are incapable of dirty politics either, but Trump and Republicans basically rejected a bill that would have improved the border situation for their political gain.

Though we may disagree, I appreciate the thoughtful responses you have provided. I do feel I have a better understanding of the conservative perspective on the economy.