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A-8 Tuesday, September 20, 2022 South Gibson Star-Times OPINION When will the poor stop looking to government? New polling data from Gallup show Americans are not having an easy time through this period of ris- ing prices. According to Gallup, 56 % of Amer- icans say now that rising prices are causing severe or moderate hard- ship. Drilling down, we see that the hardship is not shared equally. Among low-income households, those with income less than $48,000, 74% report they are experiencing hardship. Among middle-income households, with income $48,000 to $ 89,999, 63% report hardship. And among upper income, $ 90,000 and above, 40 % report experiencing hardship. But Secretary of the Treasury Jan - et Yellen showed up at Ford's Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dear- born, Michigan, recently with an up- beat economic message reminiscent of the joke, "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? " Yellen announced that she is "more optimistic about the course of our economy than I have been in quite a while." The Biden administration hopes to blow enough smoke into the eyes of voters so that reality will not set in until the November elections have passed. Yellen ought to consider reading the latest long-term budget and eco - nomic projections form the nonpar- tisan Congressional Budget Office. Per CBO's just-published "The 2022 Long-Term Budget Outlook," over the next 30 years, the U.S. bud- get deficit, as a percent of our GDP, will be double what it has averaged over the last half-century, and na- tional debt as a percentage of GDP will reach historically high levels, arriving to a mind-boggling 185% of GDP in 2052. The result of this ongoing absorp- tion of the U.S. economy into the hands of government and politicians will be, according to CBO, a slowing and sputtering of the U.S. economy "From 2022 to 2052, real potential GDP increases an average of 1.7% per year," per the report, compared to an average of 2.4% over the previ- ous 30 years, 1992 to 2021. However, from 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at an average annual rate of 3.5% . So, per the pic- ture CBO paints for us regarding our economic future, we can expect growth to be half what it averaged for the half century following the end of World War II. What does this mean to the average American? Per Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane, it means that over the next 50 years household income will be half of what it would have been had the economy grown at the faster historical rate. This is not a pretty picture for any American. But for low-income Americans, it is particularly dismal. The American dream has always been that although you may start with nothing, there is a future for you to build and accumulate wealth. That dream is being shattered. And it is being shattered by govern - ment and politicians - - Democrats who now control our government - - who pretend to be concerned about these same low-income Americans. More and more government spending, more and more govern- ment sucking the oxygen out of our economy by pulling resources away from the private sector and redi- recting it toward political control, supposedly to help "have-nots," just destroys opportunity for everyone. In Gallup polling reported in a survey done by my organization CURE, 70 % of Black Americans feel the country is divided into "haves" and "have-nots," and 57% of Blacks feel they are among the "have-nots." The challenge of all those who see the whole nation sinking under the weight of misguided government, and certainly I am talking about Re - publicans, is to reach our Black citi- zens and get them to believe that the path to opportunity, the path to be- coming a "have," is a free economy. If our Black citizens, and all Americans who feel the country is unfair, realize that freedom, and not government, is the path to wealth creation, we can turn a sinking ship around. Race for the Cure By Star Parker Heritage Viewpoint By EJ Antoni Biden's economic claims would make Orwell's ministry of truth proud What is it about those on the Left of the political spectrum that they seem to not just live in perpetual fear of apocalypse and doom but they actually embrace it? It is their raison d'etre. Is there something in the collec- tive psyche or the DNA of modern leftists that they crave fear? And doom? This cult of apocalypse started in the late 1960s with the dooms- day predictions of "the population bomb," the title of a mega-bestsell- ing book by Stanford University bi- ology professor Paul Ehrlich. "The Population Bomb" predicted that mankind was breeding at a pace that would bring about a Malthu- sian nightmare of overpopulation, starvation, war, poverty and water shortages. All that was missing was a swarm of locusts. We were run- ning out of everything. COVID-19 is the most recent case in point. Polls from the start and throughout the pandemic showed that roughly 70 % of Democrats de- scribed themselves as "very wor- ried" about the coronavirus. By con- trast, only about 30 % of Republicans were very worried. Blue states run by Democrats went into a collective fetal position for nearly two years, with forced business, school and church closings - - while red states pretty much got back to life as nor- mal. COVID-19 was a killer virus for sure, with more than 1 mil- lion deaths. But the government interven- tions were almost all oversized in terms of their effectiveness in combating the spread of the disease. Climate change is, of course, the overarching pandemic of fear so far in the 21st century that has swept across the country and induced lame-brained economic responses like windmills. Amazingly, virtually every Democrat, from the local dog catcher to the President of the Unit- ed States, believes this is an "ex- istential threat" to Earth. Twenty years ago, there were many climate change skeptics on the Left. We witnessed the full extent of the psychosis this past summer when some parts of the country saw severe flooding and others en- countered bone-dry drought. One day, the waters are rising to the levels of Noah's Ark, and the next, water shortages are going to besiege the lands and we will die of thirst. Appar- ently, if we would stop using fossil fuels, the sun will come out in the flood regions, and the rains will si- multaneously hit the parched areas of the country like California. Are they sure about that? But again, why the reign of fear? One obvious explanation is that when planetary crises arrive, as with a pandemic, it is said to require more centralized government and more control over people's lives. So, if you believe in the virtues of big government, you need supersized problems to justify its vast expan- sion. Crisis really is the rallying cry of the tyrant. As the late Julian Si- mon taught us, the answer to plan- etary problems is not more govern- ment, but human ingenuity. The Left is fatalistic. The Right is opportunistic. It's the difference between cursing the darkness and lifting a candle. I have often won- dered: What would be the Left's reaction to some kind of definitive proof that there was no manmade climate change to worry about? Would there be whoops of relief and celebration? Would there be ticker tape parades down Fifth Avenue? Now, to be fair, just because the Peddlers of Apocalypse have a long track record of being dead wrong in their dire predictions doesn't mean we don't have things to worry about. Sometimes the wolf really is at the door, no matter how many times the boy has issued false alarms. In the meantime, the thing we have to wor- ry most about running out of these days is ... freedom. Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economist with FreedomWorks. His latest book is "Govzilla: How the Re- lentless Growth of Government is De- vouring our Economy." Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Why is the Left always so deathly afraid? While many presidential ad- ministrations play it fast and loose with the truth, none resemble more closely Orwell's ironically named Ministry of Truth than the Biden administration. Its recently re- leased "Economic Blueprint" is a perfect example. The document is a combination of outright falsehoods and numeri- cal half-truths, perfectly illustrating the old saying that if you torture the data enough, it will confess to any- thing. Consider some of the admin- istration's "achievements." The blueprint claims Biden achieved the "fastest job market recovery in nearly 40 years—cre- ating [sic] 9.7 million jobs." Biden must suffer from severe memory loss. His immediate predecessor recovered 12.5 million jobs in less time, averaging 1.4 million jobs per month to Biden's 500,000. Forget 40 years—it's not even the fastest re- covery in four years. The White House also asserts there has been "faster wage growth for the bottom 50 percent than in past recoveries," but that is only nominally true. While wages have risen, prices have risen even faster, wiping out all those nominal gains, and then some. Inflation has crushed the middle and working classes, driving real wages down, not up. Additionally, it's ironic to cite lower-income earners since they are hit the hardest by the hidden tax of inflation. Another deception is that the administration is making "food more affordable for families." By what metric? People are flocking to foodbanks because food pric- es are rising at double-digit rates annually. Having to increase food stamp handouts because of ram- pant inflation is not a sign of "food affordability" or whatever other eu- phemism the administration uses. The blueprint doesn't stop there. It asserts that the Inflation Reduc- tion Act—another purposeful mis- use of language—will bring down Medicare (public) drug prices by giving the government negotiating power. But what the law actually does is index public drug prices to a percent of the price in the private market. That merely gives drug companies a double incentive to raise prices in the pri- vate market: it limits losses in the public market while making up for those losses via higher prices in the pri- vate market. Far from "taking on Big Pharma," as the blueprint claims, this was a giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry. As always with the Ministry of Truth, the situ- ation is exactly the opposite of what Big Brother is saying. If the White House cannot even be accurate looking on past data, their projections certainly should not be trusted, and this blueprint is no exception. Despite reiterating the tired talking point of not raising taxes on "those making less than $400,000 a year," that is exactly what will happen with a wave of new IRS audits, courtesy of an $ 80 -bil- lion infusion. If these auditors are really aimed exclusively at high-in- come earners, then why was an amendment to codify that in statute voted down on party lines? Likewise, the recent imposition of a minimum tax on corporate in- come does not primarily affect the wealthy. Corporate taxes are paid by employees through lower pay, customers through higher prices, and shareholders (anyone with re- tirement savings) through lower returns. In other words, the corporate minimum tax is an indirect tax which—much like inflation—is a way for the government to tax the middle and working classes without their knowledge. This administration's economic claims would be right at home in the Ministry of Truth. But that's expected from the people who have tried to redefine every word from woman, to transitory, to vaccine, to recession. Unlike most people who consider Orwell's "1984" a warning, the Biden administration reads it as an instruction manual. Life Milestones made free CALL: 812-753-3553 Put a free photo with write up on your Family and Class Reunions. SUBSCRIBE TODAY! We're not afraid to shed some light on the truth. 812-753-3553 South Gibson