Smart plagiarists know that if you're going to plagiarize a term paper, you copy the 'A' student, not the 'D' student.

Then there's also Joe Biden, who does it the other way.

He's out an d about, touting his inflation plan, with various government spending subsidies among other things, and incredibly enough, claims he's got a plan to stop inflation ... by having consumers buy cheaper generic brands over American ones.

According to the headline at Conservative Treehouse:

Biden Solution to High Retail Food Prices, Eat Generics and Store Brands

Here's the YouTube video from News Nation, beginning at the 1:35 minute point:

Here's the transcript I made from it, emphasis mine:

Q: What do you say to Americans, because to many people gas prices are still too high, groceries are still expensive, what's your message to Americans...:

Joe Biden: My message is 'we're gettin' 'em down.' I toldja we're bringin' em down, we're bringin' 'em down. I come from a family where if gas prices went up, if food prices went up, what happened was, was a conversation at the kitchen table. And we're doing a whole lot of other things to ... and by the way, the food prices, the main driver of food prices, is not the price of beef and eggs, etc., although they're up. It's packaged goods, packaged goods, you're gonna see people not buying Kellogg's packaged Raisin Bran, you're gonna see them buy another Raisin Bran, which is gonna be a dollar cheaper, so what's happening is, real movement. We're better positioned than any country in the world, any major country in the world, and our economy is growing, and it's still in a place where it's leveling out, in a rational means. The other thing that I think you're gonna see is that people are looking to say 'wow! The price not only of gas is down, the price of I'm not getting charged for overdrafting my checks, I'm not getting charged for (unintelligible). There's all kinds of things we're doin.' And one of the big things was, we were able, what we did with the 'Inflation Reduction Act' is we reduced the cost of a lot of things for people, things that they need, prescription drugs. You know, the idea that most of the senior citizens gonna have to pay for their drugs per year is $2,000, some are paying $13-, $14-, $15,000, because of cancer drugs. That changes, $2,000, max. If in fact they raise the price like they did on 1,200 prescription drugs last year .. pharma companies, guess what? If they raise it higher than the price of inflation, they've got to pay it back to Medicare. So there's a lot going on to reduce people's burdens.

Q: I want to turn to next month's election: You referred to the midterm election as a choice rather than a referendum. Given record inflation, why should voters choose Democrats? 

Joe Biden: 'Cuz there's not record inflation anymore, I'm bringing inflation down. Look what we inherited: I inherited 6.5% unemployment. It's down to 3.5%. We have, we lost about 600, we lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs. I've, we've created over 600 thou-, 700 thousand manufacturing jobs. Things are moving. As that report showed, that you have people who are now in the position where the combination of pay raises and job security, they're now better off now even with inflation than they were before it. And inflation's comin' down.    

Which should please mightily the U.S. manufacturers of Raisin Bran, headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan, who will watch their market share vanish to that generic raisin bran manufacturer, quite possibly from China, as the way out of inflation. Interesting that he singled out Raisin Bran, stating that consumers would punish them for being trapped in Joe Biden's inflation wonderland.

Biden's old enough to remember who came up with that approach to whipping inflation now, assuming he can still remember.

None other than Jerry Ford, whose 1975 plan to "Whip Inflation Now" was ridiculed as ineffective, or as Alan Greenspan put it at the time, "unbelievably stupid," since it was.

According to a 2021 recounting of the era by the Washington Post: 

“My fellow Americans,” [President Ford] said. “Winning our fight against inflation and waste involves total mobilization of America’s greatest resources — the brains, the skills and the willpower of the American people. Here is what we must do, what each and every one of you can do: To help increase food and lower prices, grow more and waste less. To help save scarce fuel in the energy crisis, drive less, heat less.”

Ford slapped on a button as he continued. “The symbol of this new mobilization,” he said, is the button “which I am wearing on my lapel. It bears the single word ‘WIN.’ … I will call upon every American to join this massive mobilization and to stick with it until we do win as a nation.”

The president and first lady Betty Ford publicly signed a pledge to personally fight inflation.

“I pledge to my fellow citizens that I will buy, when possible, only those products and services priced at or below present levels,” the president declared. He said the pledge applied especially to his wife, “who spends all the money.” Mrs. Ford joked, “I signed in blood.”

Which sounds a lot like buy generic, the old "substitution theory" of economics.

That should do wonders for manufacturers such as Kellogg's' bottom line, and pretty much nothing for stopping inflation. Buy generic? And while we're at it, go ahead and spend beyond your means because the bounced check fees are down? That's the best he can offer?

He's always been a plagiarist, but plagiarizing from the failed programs of Jerry Ford, is simply Biden-stupid. If you're going to copy someone, copy from the 'A' student ... such as the great Ronald Reagan, who, following the ideas of Milton Friedman, destroyed inflation through tax cuts which brought bona fide economic growth, and by going along with then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker's temporary interest rate hikes, which were the only way to wring inflation out of the system. That's because inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. The U.S. was flooded with too much money brought on by too much federal spending at the time. But after two years of Reagan, by 1982, the U.S. economy had sprung to life. Milton Friedman, as Biden has yawped, "isn't running the show anymore."

So now we get Jerry Ford's solution instead. Ford, who was an amiable fellow and not completely terrible as a president, failed on inflation because he didn't understand where inflation came from. Biden, though, has the benefit of experience, and can see: A: The inflation and stagflation of the Ford and Carter years, and B. The stellar turnaround by Ronald Reagan, who went down as one of history's greatest presidents, admired even by Barack Obama. 

Biden won't crib and plagiarize from that guy. Nope, he busies himself plagiarizing the 'D' student instead, not the 'A' one. Lucky us: We're now back to Whip Inflation Now.

Image: Screen shot from camera aimed at a live broadcast, processed with Adobe CameraRaw.