How Bidenomics Contributed to Inflation

The Bidenomics push was best understood as a messaging strategy rather than a shift in policy vision; the White House memo announcing the Chicago speech was crafted by two political messaging operatives rather than anyone on the administration’s policy team. But it did capture an underlying policy vision, a distinct approach to the economy that came to the fore during Biden’s first term. That vision had many facets pandemic aid, industrial policy, handouts for labor unions and public workers but in many ways, it could be reduced to a single, overriding response: government spending.

Bidenomics was, at heart, a philosophy of throwing money at programs, people, political allies, and favored constituencies. That spending contributed directly and significantly to the rapid rise in inflation that helped fuel voter dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. Thanks to misallocation, poor implementation, and self-contradictory regulatory requirements, the substantive public payoffs to that spending have been weak at best and counterproductive at worst.

via reason.com