Two of the top economists at the George Soros-funded Economic Policy Institute (EPI) claimed in an op-ed for CNN Business that U.S. families have become “better off” thanks to government stimulus money. They also wrote that America is experiencing a “strong recovery” — except they made zero mention of soaring gas prices and completely downplayed concerns over inflation.
Soros’s $1,265,000 investment in the EPI from 2017 to 2019 has seemingly paid off.
EPI senior economist Elise Gould and EPI President Heidi Shierholz wrote a puff piece March 3 absurdly headlined, “The economy is recovering fast. But we need to ensure it works for everyone.” They cited the economy adding 6.6 million jobs as evidence that the over $2 trillion in CARES Act stimulus funding supposedly helped get the economy back “on track.” They also called for “strong government action” and downplayed the 40-year spike in inflation as “mostly inevitable” and a result of “global supply chain problems.”
“It is radically underappreciated how much better off US families are as a result of policies that were put in place during the pandemic,” wrote Gould and Shierholz.
Unfortunately, for American families who eat food or fill up their cars with gasoline, life has become harder, not easier, thanks to inflation. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January that the price of “meats, poultry, fish and eggs” alone rose by 12.2 percent, “fruits and vegetables” by 5.6 percent, and gas prices skyrocketed by 40 percent, during the January 2021-January 2022 period.
Gould and Shierholz totally omitted the rising price of gas in their article and buried an explanation for inflation in the seventh paragraph, where they hedged that things would be worse without the so-called “strong jobs recovery.” And in what world does rising inflation mean that U.S. families have become “better off?”
Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration, tweeted that jobs increased but “real wages [are] likely down more over the last 12 months than any pre-pandemic period since the data started in 2006.”
The economy is choosing employment growth over real wage growth.
— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) March 4, 2022
6.7m jobs added in the last 12 months: larger than any pre-pandemic %age gain since the 1980s.
But real wages likely down more over the last 12 months than any pre-pandemic period since the data started in 2006.
Gould’s and Shierholz’s apparent enthusiasm on the economy is likely not shared by many American families. A Gallup poll in February found that U.S. adults' satisfaction with the economy plummeted a whopping 35 percent from 2020, when Donald Trump was president.
The American people also seem to have little hope for an economic revival. In January, a Pew Research Center poll from January revealed that only “27% of adults say they expect that economic conditions will be better a year from now than they are today.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact CNN Business at 404-827-1700 and demand it stop publishing articles from Soros connected economists gaslighting Americans on the Biden economy.
