Even the "Winners" of Bidenomics Are Angry. They’re Right to Be!

The fundamental mistake neoliberal cheerleaders keep making as they steadily lose their minds.

In the ashes of an embarrassing loss to the dumbest former president in history, Democratic Party loyalists are being roundly roasted for insisting that the Biden economy was Already Great. But I’ll be demonstrating why the cheerleaders of Bidenomics aren't just half-wrong or mostly wrong, they're one hundred and ten percent wrong.

Even if You Ignore the Desperate Poor

This will be incredibly natural for Bidenomics fans.

For a minute, let's ignore everyone who never saw a wage increase and got smacked with inflation anyway.

For a minute, let's ignore everyone who maybe kept up with inflation, but lost the Child Tax Credit, free school meals, extra SNAP benefits, the student loan pause, the WIC increase, childcare provider grants, expanded Medicaid, or got evicted or foreclosed on after those protections all expired during the Biden administration.

You might say that’s not all the fault of the current administration. Sure, whatever! We’re ignoring all of that. And this:

And this:

Let's only think about people who actually saw a wage increase that kept up with inflation, or even outpaced it. These are the poster children, right? Everyone here understands the problem with thinking this scenario applies to everyone, but at least those winners should be grateful, right? At very least, they shouldn’t be angry, right?

Sorry, that's delusional.

Pick a God Damned Lane

This is America we're talking about - the most individualistic society in world history. The core of the American ethos is that you are personally responsible for your personal income, whether it's high or low.

Biden didn't give a workers a raise himself, outside of a modest bump for federal employees that didn’t keep up with inflation, and which the administration recently declared is not happening again in 2025. And maybe he gave a raise to some of the people still defending him, but those two groups still leave us with 99% of the population to consider.

By reducing unemployment, he created millions of opportunities for people to fight for raises. That’s great, but people busted their asses to get those raises- worked extra hours, made stressful job changes, relocated their families, and so on. 

By reducing unemployment, he created millions of opportunities for people to fight for raises. That’s great, but people busted their asses to get those raises- worked extra hours, made stressful job changes, relocated their families, and so on. 

The American individualist ethos gives people too much confidence in personal responsibility for success or failure, but the Democratic party has absolutely no interest in people thinking otherwise. They are a center-right, capitalist coalition owned by the rich. If Americans saw themselves as a collective society rather than millions of competing micro-entrepreneurs, the first thing to disappear would be the Democratic Party. You can count them out of that difficult discussion.

This has allowed for a backdoor into a correct understanding among those lucky workers: they deserve all the gains they worked for.

The Rug Pull

Workers have been chasing that carrot since 2008, and as soon as a decent number of them had it in hand, it dissolved into thin air. Can you even imagine?

While Americans certainly have some delusions about personal responsibility, at least we don’t think inflation is a personal moral failing. In truth, it’s a systemic failing built into our economic system, driven by corporate price gouging. But again, the Democratic Party has shown very little willingness to point fingers at the corporations they rely on for financial contributions. The Harris campaign messaging on price gouging was late and tepid, to be very generous. So blame for inflation has to fall back to the default, the only other entity of scale besides corporations… the government. The current government.

And so even though inflation was the fault of corporate price gouging, it’s also the fault of the current government for doing close to nothing about it.

The Bed They Made

So by adhering to their own philosophy and own interests, the Democratic Party already chose where to assign credit - to the industrious individual - and where to assign blame - themselves. Then they spent a year screaming that this wasn’t fair, and that everyone was fine, that it was just a messaging problem, and that America was Already Great, all while the Republicans acknowledged the problem and blamed immigrants. 

Quick, what year was this article written?! 2016 or 2024? Admit it, you weren’t sure for a second. 

Anyway, free Palestine.