During Joe Biden's State of the Union address, he spoke about all the wonderful ways he is helping the economy and lowering costs for American families.  He said he could lower costs even more and asked, "So what are we waiting for?  Let's get this done."

If you're drinking something, please swallow it and put the glass down before reading what he said next.  Ready?  Biden continued: "And while you're at it, confirm my nominees to the Federal Reserve, which plays a critical role in fighting inflation."

You're lucky.  Unfortunately, no one warned me to put down my glass before I heard Biden say that.  I expect a lot of nonsense from our president, but I didn't think that after borrowing over 2 trillion dollars from the Fed and having the Department of the Treasury print the money, he would have the chutzpah to say the Fed is fighting inflation. 

President Biden also keeps asking Congress to pour trillions of dollars more into his plan, which he says will "lower costs."  You shouldn't have started drinking again — sorry.  President Biden reassured us that "under my plan, nobody earning less than $400,000 a year will pay an additional penny in new taxes.  Nobody."

He neglected to mention that inflation is equivalent to a tax on everyone, and we're all paying it. 

Biden also reassured those of us who are alarmed at the high price of gas that his plan will lower the price of electric vehicles, and then we'll never have to pay at the gas pump again.  Where is the money going to come from to pay for those government-subsidized electric vehicles?  The Treasury's printing press?  Where is the energy going to come from to charge the batteries of those vehicles?  Solar?  Wind?  No, fossil fuels.  Better stop drinking while reading this article.  Where is the lithium going to come from to construct those batteries?  These questions were asked by the most unlikely person: Michael Moore, who is an avid leftist.  Video excerpts from a documentary he wrote that answers those questions can be viewed here.  Needless to say, his truth-telling turned him from leftist hero to pariah.

Biden said lets "cut energy costs for families an average of $500 a year by combatting climate change."  Isn't that wonderful?  We can keep the planet from burning up (which it isn't) and save money at the same time.  Biden has already spent 2 trillion dollars of our money.  Where are the savings?  Why if we're saving so much money is there so much inflation? 

President Biden has two answers for that: COVID and greedy corporations.  He doesn't explain why corporations suddenly became greedy while he was president.

It is reasonable to expect that printing money to help people who lost their jobs because of COVID and the lockdowns that followed COVID would lead to inflation.  The question is, how much inflation?  Why is inflation a lot worse during the Biden administration than it was during the Trump administration?

Biden's solution to inflation, besides printing money to support his spending plans, is to tax corporations.  During his speech, he said:

Just last year, 55 Fortune 500 corporations earned $40 billion in profits and paid zero dollars in federal income tax.  That's simply not fair.  That's why I've proposed a 15% minimum tax rate for corporations.

What President Biden didn't mention was that the reason those companies did not pay income tax was that they deducted expenses, including payments to employees.  Taxing corporations is appealing to many left-wing voters because many of those voters don't realize that taxing corporations indirectly taxes them.

There are actions that Biden can take to slow the drop in the purchasing power of the dollar.  In order to understand what these actions are, it is important to remember that the purchasing power of the dollar depends on both the productivity of a country and the amount of money in circulation.  In addition to ceasing to print money, President Biden should stop policies that reduce American productivity.  Policies that raise energy costs, or lead to the destruction of resources and property, or divert money to wasteful projects, reduce American productivity.   

When Biden became president, all he had to do was do nothing, but instead, he created a border crisis.  Flying illegal aliens all over the country and supporting them at the taxpayers' expense was a clever way to ensure that they will vote for the Democrat party, but it is also a huge waste of money that could otherwise be spent by taxpayers in a productive way.  Biden's open border policies have led to an influx of drugs that have turned productive people into crime-committing drug addicts.  Soft-on-crime policies of the Democrat party have led to destructive riots and an epidemic of shoplifting, car theft, and violent crime.  Together with Biden's war on oil and his waste of money on solar boondoggles, all these policies have lowered American productivity.  In his latest outrage, he released billions of dollars to Iran.  It's harder to imagine a bigger waste of money than one that pays for terrorist rockets.  No, it's not.  I just did: buying Russian oil, which fuels Russia's war with Ukraine. 

I think we should all stop thinking about this and have another drink while we still can afford one.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.