by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
After getting whacked by inflation, incomes have now outrun inflation for the 17th month in a row.
Fueled by incomes that outgrew inflation, our Drunken Sailors, as we’ve lovingly and facetiously called them for well over a year, continued to increase their spending in May, and they did so at a solid pace, roughly in line with the Good Times just before the pandemic, and they saved the rest, our Drunken Sailors, and the savings rate ticked up too.
Disposable income, adjusted for inflation, jumped by 0.5% in May from April, the biggest increase since January 2023, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis today. By contrast, in April, disposable income had barely kept up with inflation.
President Joe Biden got some bad news on the eve of the first presidential election: the government’s estimate of inflation in the first quarter of the year was revised higher.
Joke Biden didn’t invent inflation. But he inadvertently attached his name to it, much like Jimmy Carter did in the 1970s.
The most important thing to understand about the persistent inflation that has destroyed 20 percent of the dollar’s purchasing power since Joe Biden took office is that inflation is not the target of government policies designed to eliminate it. Inflation is the creation of government policies and government policies intentionally perpetuate inflation to enable the government to default unlawfully on its otherwise unsustainable debt.:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/GettyImages-523282434-9634e83b86a84217ab113ef30ddbefee.jpg)
Middle-income earners are taking second jobs, cutting back on spending and delaying large purchases to deal with inflation, a new survey shows.
Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists — all unabashed liberals — have unleashed a partisan attack against Donald Trump on the eve of the first presidential debate.
It’s a key question on voters’ minds heading into Thursday night’s presidential debate: How far does my dollar go in 2024?
Similar to the United States, America’s neighbors to the north are seeing grocery prices at supermarkets shoot through the roof, prompting Canadians to document their grievances on social media.