CHART OF THE DAY: Inflation Is Worst for People Democrats Claim to Care About Most

Democrats have spent a record $1.9 trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money in the past year and a half, often in the name of racial equity. But the inflation they’ve fueled has disproportionately hurt black and Hispanic Americans, according to a new poll.

THE CHART

The national survey, published this week and conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, emphasized the toll that skyrocketing prices have taken on racial minorities in the U.S.

More than half of black and Latino households, and more than two-thirds of Native American households, reported that recent price increases have caused them serious financial problems, per the poll.

  • 16% of black renters and 10% of Hispanics renters said they were evicted or faced eviction in the past year, compared to 9% of white renters and 4% of Asian renters.
  • 32% of black adults, 30% of Hispanics and 39% of Native Americans said they were having serious difficulty paying for food, compared to 21% of whites and 13% of Asians.

SAME ENERGY

An analysis by the New York Federal Reserve Bank published in June found that black and Hispanic Americans had faced higher inflation on average since the beginning of last year.

  • The Fed attributed the higher average costs to blacks spending a larger share of their income on housing and Hispanics spending more on transportation, relative to whites and Asians.
  • A study by Bank of America last November similarly showed that 2021 inflation had hit black and Hispanic households harder than those of other racial groups due to disparities in spending on energy and food.

THE POLITICS

President Biden pledged on day one of his administration to orient the entire federal government toward advancing racial equity, and named that as one of the main goals of the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus he announced last January.

  • “Today, President Biden is announcing the American Rescue Plan to change the course of the pandemic, build a bridge towards economic recovery, and invest in racial justice,” the White House said at the time, championing his party’s increasingly woke politics.

This March, a year after Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law, economists from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank concluded that federal spending was the primary driver of inflation in 2021.

  • Contrary to its name, the Inflation Reduction Act recently passed by Democrats will have no impact on inflation — “statistically indistinguishable from zero,” according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.