By Ray Cardello for September 4, 2023, Season 21 / Post 41

Today is the holiday when we celebrate the American Worker. Labor Day is celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the work and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States. This definition sounds like a union mantra, but today, we celebrate every worker contributing to this great country’s incredible success and growth. We are still a very young nation on the global stage, and looking at how far we have come as a technological and industrial powerhouse is mind-boggling.

This country was fueled by the investment of brilliant entrepreneurs willing to risk their fortunes for progress and the middle class who supplied the workforce to turn the ideas into reality. Though we have celebrated Labor Day for more than 140 years, it was really the post-WWII era and the Greatest Generation that set the pace and standard for how successful the American workforce could be. The middle class and the American worker have been under incredible pressure in the last few years and suffering greatly under Bidenomics. We are gaslighted by Joe Biden and his administration that the Biden economy is on the rise and that Americans are enjoying prosperity as a result. These people are out of touch with reality and could not be more wrong. They use manipulated statistics to support their narrative, but reality exposes the charade. Slight of hand does not help us stretch the dollars in our wallets. Forget the inflation numbers, and let’s instead talk about affordability.

The push to increase the minimum wage has certainly put more money in the pockets of entry-level employees. What this effort has actually done is force small businesses to scale back their staffing and increase prices. Unfortunately for many of these small businesses, the one-two-punch of COVID and increased labor costs has driven them out of business. Combine these increased costs with a shrunken labor force, and you have a very difficult economy for owners, workers, and consumers.

The White House points to recent inflation numbers in the threes as a triumph of administration policies, but it is a fake statistic and a significant lie. First of all, the inflation number is a comparison of certain costs this year to last year. The 3% they brag about today is higher than the nearly double-digit inflation numbers of 2022, which were increases over 2021, and so on. This compounded effect is what Americans feel when the money earned does not cover the expenses paid. That is reality versus fiction. The government has also pulled energy, housing, and food out of inflation calculations, which is a disservice to Americans. That is the difference between the theory of inflation and the reality of affordability.

Biden says he is the man who will put the middle-class in a better place and prepared for the future. With rising costs outpacing wages and the negative impact of the economy and inflation on our 401k accounts, the middle class will not have to worry about raising the retirement age because we will all be working into our eighties. The economy is just another aspect of the job that President Joe Biden has not a clue. If he would like some insight into affordability, he only needs to ask a member of the middle class who has four days of expenses ahead and eight days to go until payday.