All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 13, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:19
When Will The Biden Inflation Bubble Burst? | Ep. 1394
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Inflation hits the worst levels in 40 years as Joe Biden tries to play kissy face with Jimmy Fallon and Jen Psaki assures parents they really do want their children eating lunch off the floor.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
Don't like big tech and the government spying on you?
Visit expressvpn.com slash Ben.
You may have noticed that inflation rates are wildly out of control.
Now would be an excellent time to diversify at least a little bit into precious metals considering the government is inflating the currency basically into the ether.
Whether they're looking at your accounts or taxing your unrealized gains, the government will come after your money.
They are very creative when it comes to taking your hard-earned money to fund their expensive, radical agenda.
I've said it before, I'll say it again.
You're making a mistake if you're not diversifying your savings.
Hold gold in a tax shelter account or keep gold in a safe at your very own home.
I buy my gold from Birchgold.
It's the only company I trust and recommend.
And when you buy gold from Birchgold by December 23rd, they'll send you free gold for every $10,000 you purchase.
With thousands of satisfied customers and an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, you can trust Birch Gold to protect your savings today.
Text BEN to 989898 to claim eligibility for their free gold with purchase offer by December 23rd.
You know one thing that has never been worth zero?
No, not Lehman Brothers.
Gold.
Text BEN to 989898.
Protect your savings today.
The government is interested mostly in the government spending all of your money and then maybe grabbing some more of your money in order to pay for the fact that they've spent all your money already.
So, you know what?
Protect your savings today.
All right, speaking of inflation, the statistics for the Biden administration are just egregious.
So about the middle of last week, you started to see the Biden administration trot out a new line of propaganda.
Their new line of propaganda is that the economy is actually going swimmingly.
This is because the unemployment rates are low.
Well, the unemployment rates are low for a couple of reasons.
One, people have a lot of money in their bank account because the government literally just helicoptered cash to people last year.
They just threw money at people.
And so people actually have a lot of money in their savings accounts right now.
That is starting to dwindle as the unemployment benefits have run, and you're starting to see people go back into the workforce.
But this has created a massive artificial shortage of labor.
And because Democrats keep pushing to restructure the relationship between the individual and the government, there are a lot of people who are sort of waiting around thinking that the government is going to pick up their tabs at this point.
Okay, so that is problem number one.
But the government is treating that as solution because the unemployment rate is low.
Also, there's a vast gap in the unemployment rate between some of the blue states and a lot of the red states.
In fact, all of the states that are best on unemployment right now are red states.
All of the states that are worst on unemployment are blue states.
That's because the blue states continue to lock down over COVID because they've decided to panic their citizens with the promise that government would be able to solve this crisis when, in fact, government really cannot solve the crisis beyond making the vaccines available, which they did almost a year ago at this point, all the way back in February and March.
So the Biden administration is facing down a lot of bad news.
The polling data for them is really, really bad.
So they started to put out this line that the economy... Actually, you don't know what's going on, guys.
You don't know what's going on.
Secretly, the economy is really, really good.
There's only one problem.
The economy is not really, really good.
Inflation should not be spiraling out of control this way.
According to the Washington Post, Prices rose at the fastest pace in nearly 40 years last month.
40 years!
Increasing 6.8% over the same period a year ago as inflation continues to squeeze households and businesses nationwide and complicates the political environment for Congress and the White House.
That's one way of saying that Democrats are in serious trouble according to the generic ballot.
Republicans are up 10 points in the generic ballot right now.
And those numbers rarely go the other way.
When the party in power is already trailing in the mid-term elections, By the end of December of the year before, it almost never goes the other way.
There are very few exceptions to that particular rule.
2002 is one of those rules, and that's because of September 11th.
But generally, the party in power doesn't do well in the midterms, and if they're trailing, it usually gets worse for them before the election.
Consumer Price Index data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that prices rose 0.8% in November compared with October, with inflation spreading further throughout the economy, including to areas that had not been as affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
The November data marked the largest 12-month increase since June 1982, during a period when inflation was more of a scourge on daily life than most millennials have ever known.
Current inflation dynamics have been spurred by a devastating pandemic that roiled the global economy, upsetting the workforce and supply chains, etc., etc., etc.
Okay, well actually, if you were to measure inflation by the same sort of consumer price index that we used in 1980, the inflation year-over-year in the United States is not 6.8%, it's like 14%.
Okay, this is devastatingly bad.
And even the media have been forced to cover it.
So, here is, for example, ABC News' David Muir saying, yeah, we already know inflation is high.
You don't need us to tell you what you're seeing already.
The new report out tonight showing inflation is now near a 40-year high in this country.
Consumer prices up 0.8% last month alone.
Year-to-year, prices up now 6.8%.
Americans are paying more for gas, food, clothing, and cars.
Tonight, President Biden acknowledging it is squeezing many families across this country.
He pointed to the pandemic, the supply issues, not just in the U.S., but around the world.
But we know there are many moving parts on this.
Okay, and again, it's not just David Muir.
ABC's Rebecca Jarvis says this is not a bump in the road.
And for all the talk about the Biden administration saying that this is merely temporary, they're saying temporary.
Most economists do see these prices as more than a bump in the road.
They expect inflation to persist through next spring.
And remember, these supply chain issues are global, caused by the pandemic.
But there are also, as you point to, labor shortages, issues of people, many Americans waiting to return to work until they see wages rise more significantly, having saved up $2 trillion throughout the course of the pandemic by not dining out, by not traveling, Expectations are now that the Federal Reserve will have to step in and hike interest rates next year in order to cool things up.
So how much are the expenses up?
According to CBS News' Noral O'Donnell, expenses for the typical family are up $4,000.
Okay, that's not a minor bump in the road.
That's not a hiccup.
$4,000 is a lot of money for most people.
Prices were up 6.8% in November compared to a year ago.
That is the biggest increase in nearly 40 years.
The cost of pretty much everything is surging.
Food, gas, electricity, housing, cars, and clothes.
And those who received raises this year are seeing them wiped out by skyrocketing costs.
Listen to this.
By one estimate, expenses for a typical American family have shot up by about $4,000 in the past year.
Okay, Democrats are in real trouble here because, again, all of their policies are geared toward making this worse, not better.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
First, if you're looking for ways to skip the trip to the post office this season and dodge all that hectic holiday shopping traffic, why not save some time and money with Stamps.com?
Stamps.com lets you compare rates, print labels, access exclusive discounts on UPS and USPS services all year long.
It makes sense, especially if your business sends more mail and packages during the holidays.
Which is pretty typical.
Here at Daily Wire, we've been using Stamps.com since 2017.
We are not going to be wasting our time.
Whether you're selling online or running an office or side hustle, Stamps.com can save you a lot of time, money and stress during the holidays.
Access all the post office and UPS shipping services you need without taking the trip.
Get discounts you can't find anywhere else like up to 40% off those USPS shipping rates and 76% off UPS.
So you're saving time and you're saving money and you don't have to schlep things over to the post office.
What exactly are you waiting for?
This is a very easy call.
Save time and money this holiday season with stamps.com.
Sign up with promo code Shapiro for a special offer that includes A four-week trial, free postage, digital scale, no long-term commitments or contracts.
Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page, and enter code SHAPIRO.
Again, that's stamps.com, click that microphone at the top of the page, and enter code SHAPIRO.
The Democrats are trying to maintain that everything is fine.
That everything is fine.
Or they're trying to blame the Federal Reserve.
But the reality is that their policies are the big problem.
There's an article from the Washington Post yesterday.
It is titled, In Liberty County, workers who quit feel liberated, but the community discovers a powerful downside.
Oh, you mean that paying people to stay home leads to price inflation and shortages?
Who could have suspected such a thing, except for anyone with a functioning prefrontal cortex?
According to the Washington Post, Maggie Town quit her job as a hotel front desk manager because the pandemic taught her she could squeeze by without her paycheck.
Now home with her kids, Townes says her life is much improved.
But at the La Quinta hotel she left, an exodus of housekeepers and front desk workers forced owner Hassal Patel to close the swimming pool and fitness center and sharply reduce room cleaning.
Fannie Lou Bruton left her job as a cook because she didn't want to be around so many people anymore.
She realized, she said, I did enough.
She's delighted that the COVID pandemic drove her into retirement.
But at Izola's Country Cafe, where the staff has plummeted from 42 to 12 workers, the owners had to eliminate breakfast, slash their hours, and shut entirely on Sundays.
Liberty County, a 45-minute drive southwest of Savannah, is Quit Town, USA, one of the many places across the country where the pandemic slammed the brakes on propulsive job growth and startling numbers of people have quit their jobs this year, including more than 12 million Americans this fall alone.
The result, according to business owners and county officials, is a place where people are thinking about work in new, sometimes revelatory ways, but also feeling the pain of reduced services, pinched bottom lines, and a diminished sense of community.
Right, because it turns out that the left-wing dream that nobody ever works anymore and then we all get to sit home and finger-paint Jackson Pollock?
That is not real.
People actually need work to feel fulfilled.
Also, if you wish for there to be productive goods and services for you to trade with somebody else, you need to go to work.
The left's dream, which is that everybody will basically stay home and the government will cut them a check while they watch soap operas, is a ridiculous and stupid dream.
It undermines actual human flourishing.
Workers who have stepped away from full-time jobs say the pandemic helped them discover they can survive on occasional gig work and government benefits.
Oh, can they?
Well, who pays for those government benefits?
Pray tell.
Could that be the rest of us who are working?
Work harder?
Millions on welfare depend on you?
Gonna bring back the 1970s bumper stickers?
Many Liberty County residents left minimum wage positions at restaurants, hotels, and retail outlets to take jobs at the county's burgeoning warehouses and distribution centers.
The upside?
As much as double the pay and more flexibility in work hours.
The downside?
Severe strains of the mom-and-pop businesses they quit and damaged or severed long-standing social bonds.
So yeah, all the people who say they're for small businesses have basically wrecked small business across the country.
There has never been a dichotomous split in wealth like we've seen during this pandemic.
Probably throughout human history, basically the middle class split into people who are big corporations, which did pretty well during the course of the pandemic, and welfare.
And if you're in the middle, if you're running a small mom and pop shop, if you're running a restaurant, if you took out your life savings and you try to build a business, And your business just wasn't large enough to survive the government shutdowns?
And guess what?
You're out on your ass.
And the left is celebrating this.
They think this is good.
They think this is good.
Right?
It is not good.
Okay?
It is very bad.
And by the way, it has bleed-over effects in terms of the inflation rate.
And now you get the inflationary spiral because why would you re-enter the workforce unless you get a giant raise?
But if you get a giant raise, guess where the prices are going to have to go in order to pay for that giant raise?
And so you get a wage-price spiral.
That is what is happening right now.
The Biden administration is trying to downplay this, pretending that it's not really a big deal.
In fact, here is the President of the United States, Joe Biden, trying to remain alive, saying that, you know, inflation is really not that big a deal.
This is Joe Biden over the weekend.
You know, the biggest one, a third of the increase in inflation is used automobiles.
So, I mean, it is a real problem.
But the point is that has to do with supply chain as well, but it also has to do with the fact that not everybody's looking for a used automobile, but those who are, they're paying higher prices because there's fewer of them because of the COVID and what was sold out and the like.
Okay, so cream of wheat for both mouth and brains, the President of the United States.
Trying to downplay inflation as used cars is insane.
At the beginning, used cars were driving some of the inflation stats.
Not anymore.
What is driving the inflation stats at this point is not even things like food and gas.
In the Consumer Price Index, absent food and gas numbers is still extraordinarily inflated.
Everyone knows this.
So he is lying to you.
And the thing is that not a lot of people are believing it.
Jen Psaki was asked questions about inflation over the weekend.
She didn't have much to say about it.
She tried to avoid the questions.
Given what Jerome Powell is now saying, does the administration, does the president acknowledge that inflation is more entrenched and not transitory?
Well, Kristen, I would say that I can't speak, obviously, for Jerome Powell, but I think part of the point here is that it doesn't really matter what you call it.
Well, we've seen costs increase in some areas, and we've seen them move in a good direction in some areas as well.
What we need to do now is think about what we're going to do about rising costs.
in some areas and we've seen a good direct that move in a good direction in some areas as well. What we need to do now is think about what we're going to do about rising costs. What is our plan to address rising costs?
And what is their plan to address rising costs?
They have a two-pronged plan.
One is to basically kick it over to the Fed and hope that the Fed tapers.
And then they can blame the Fed for the sinking economy as opposed to, you know, their own bad policies.
And two, spend more money.
So over the weekend, Joe Biden said, We've never had this kind of growth in 60 years, but inflation is affecting people's lives.
The reason why economists think Build Back Better is going to, in fact, diminish the impact on inflation is because it's reducing costs for ordinary people.
No, it is not.
No, it is not.
Larry Summers, who has been the voice of reason throughout this entire inflationary spiral, you remember that he was the Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, and he was saying early on when the Biden administration was pushing $1.9 trillion quote-unquote bailout package that was absolutely unnecessary in the aftermath of vaccine distribution.
He said, we're going to hit an inflationary spiral.
And everybody laughed at him because we truly have not had a major inflationary spiral in the United States for 40 years.
Well, now it's back.
Larry Summers was right.
All y'all were wrong.
And here is Larry Summers saying, yeah, if Joe Biden got his spending plans through, there would be more inflation, not less.
I think the inflation rate would be slightly higher in 2022 and 2023 with the Build Back Better than it would be without the Build Back Better.
I think over the longer term, there might be some effects that go the other way.
But I think over the next couple of years, what economists say, ceteris paribus, other things equal, it would raise the inflation rate.
Okay, he is correct.
Okay, now here's the problem for the Democrats.
They can't get out of this without one of two things happening.
Either Joe Biden stopping the spending and allowing things to get back to normal, which they can't do because his entire agenda is reliant on the idea that he has to do something big and he has to keep pushing big things, or the Federal Reserve has to taper and taper in really short order.
And when that happens, you will see a spike in the unemployment rate.
This is what happened back when Paul Volcker did this in the early 1980s.
Paul Volcker had actually been appointed to the Federal Reserve By Jimmy Carter.
And he waited until the Reagan administration and he really started to raise interest rates.
And when that happened, you saw a sharp spike in the unemployment rate in the United States.
Because these two things tend to happen.
When the Federal Reserve makes it more difficult to borrow money for banks, banks start giving it out at higher interest rates.
That means fewer people borrow, means less spending, and that means fewer jobs.
So now that you're trapped in this cycle, it's very difficult to get out of that cycle without some form of pain.
And that pain is coming.
Now, presumably Joe Biden would like to blame that pain, you would imagine, on the Federal Reserve, right?
At least he can't blame himself.
Oh, well, you know, the Federal Reserve, they're independent.
They're doing what they want.
They're just doing what...
Okay, but here's the bottom line.
The American people are going to hold him responsible because, again, this is his economy.
None of this was necessary.
It was not necessary.
This is not all supply chain problems.
This is a spending problem.
This is a problem, by the way, that is, to a certain extent, bipartisan.
We should not have blown $7 trillion into Americans' pockets last year.
It's something we should not have done.
But at least you could excuse that by saying there were no vaccines available, so we have to try and keep people away from crowded areas and whatnot.
By the time the vaccines were available, they were available in January.
Once that started to become widely available, February-March, there was no excuse for what Joe Biden did.
And we're going to get to the Federal Reserve and what they are probably going to do in just one second.
First, let's talk about the fact that if you're a responsible person, you need life insurance.
Let's say that you're responsible for a gang of children, let's call them lost boys, and that the former leader of your gang, has absconded, has just left for years and years and years.
And you took over and you're the responsible.
Well, finally, the leader, the original leader, he comes back and he's going to lead you in a battle against the big baddie.
And but you are tempted to fight the big baddie yourself.
Well, as he chants at you, Rufio, Rufio, and as you approach him, you might be thinking to yourself, man, well, at the very least, I should have thought about the lost boys and bought some life insurance.
First, head on over to policygenius.com slash apero, answer a few questions about yourself in minutes.
You can work out how much life insurance coverage you need, compare personalized quotes to find your best price.
You could save 50% or more on life insurance by comparing quotes with PolicyGenius.
Their licensed experts will help you understand your options and apply for a policy.
The PolicyGenius team works for you, not the insurance companies.
You can trust them to offer unbiased help and to advocate for you every step until you are covered.
Policy Genius does not add on extra fees or sell your information to third parties.
Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro to get your free life insurance quotes.
See how much you could save.
That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro.
Again, policygenius.com slash Shapiro.
So I think what's going to happen here is not that the Biden administration is going to back off of their garbage policy.
I think instead they're just going to hope that the Fed takes the hit.
But here's the thing.
The Fed is still widely perceived as Joe Biden's Fed.
As it should be.
The notion that the Federal Reserve is completely independent from the executive branch is crazy.
It has not been forever.
The Federal Reserve is not some independent group of people with the best interests of the American public at heart.
The Federal Reserve generally does what an administration wants it to do.
This is why, for example, Donald Trump used to try to leverage the Federal Reserve into lowering the interest rates.
He used to talk about, maybe we should go to zero interest rates, maybe we should go negative interest rates.
And the Federal Reserve, credibly enough, actually did go down on the interest rates while Trump was president.
Loose Federal Reserve monetary policy is a bad thing.
The Federal Reserve has not stuck to the sort of Milton Friedman notion that we should inflate the currency by a couple percent a year.
They've aimed for that, but they've generally failed because they're just not that good at this.
It turns out economists are not that great at being able to read the full hand of the market.
This is why I am not a believer in the Federal Reserve system, other than essentially guaranteeing bank deposits.
But put that aside, it's pretty clear at this point what the Biden administration wants to do, and that is make the Fed do the hard work.
Kevin Warsh, I'm writing over for the Wall Street Journal, former member of the Federal Reserve Board.
He writes about how this really is the Federal Reserve's fault.
He says inflation is a choice.
It's a choice for which the Fed is chiefly responsible.
The risk of an inflationary spiral arises when policymakers first dismiss the problem and then cast blame elsewhere.
Inflation becomes embedded in the price formation process when the central bank acts belatedly or with insufficient conviction.
To date, the Fed has acted as an enabler.
The sure sign of a problem when a president gives voice to the scourge of inflation and takes executive action well before the central bank acknowledges the severity of the situation.
Supply chain bottlenecks is the popularized rationalization for the surge in prices, but the supply chain story sheds more shade than light.
Consumer prices are higher because prices are rising at the point of production, assembly and transportation.
This is a description of the state of affairs, not its source.
The Fed's inertia in withdrawing extraordinary monetary policy amid full employment is the proximate cause of surging prices.
When monetary policy is too tight, it slows aggregate demand.
When monetary policy is too loose, it damages aggregate supply.
Extraordinarily aggressive monetary policy, namely quantitative easing, discourages investments in real assets like capital equipment relative to financial assets like stocks.
Because it takes a long time to see the beneficial net effect of buying a really expensive piece of equipment that upgrades your business, as opposed to just buying stock, which is running up in price.
That's why non-residential capital investment in the real economy, things like port modernization, is running 7% below the pre-pandemic trend and 25% below trend since the advent of quantitative easing.
A more exuberant stock market and a less resilient real economy are both consequences of the Fed's extant policy regime.
By August 2020, the Fed became impatient with the purported low inflation rate of Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen.
Chairman Jerome Powell called low inflation the preeminent economic challenge of our time.
So the Fed bet on a new policy regime to get inflation higher.
It worked.
It's not the first time a central bank wanted a little more inflation and got a lot more.
Last year, in another break with precedent, the Fed loudly and explicitly endorsed a blowout in federal spending.
Congress swiftly agreed.
Federal spending increased from an average of about 21% of GDP in the prior decade to more than 30% of GDP in 2020 and 2021.
National debt relative to GDP went from 79% in 2019 to over 100% today.
And the Fed bankrolled that fiscal profligacy, purchasing more than half of the new Treasury debt issued in that year.
Call it monetary dominance.
None of this is a shock.
Again, the Federal Reserve participated in this inflationary run, and this is having already some pretty net negative effects.
Right now, we're stuck in a trap, okay?
Because here's the problem.
You raise the interest rates, and one of the things that happens is you've now raised the rates on the federal deficit.
If you're going to pay off the debt, it's now more expensive to pay off the debt.
And again, there are secondary effects to the Federal Reserve's monetary policy here.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this year's inflation surge has had a sometimes overlooked side effect.
It means the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy is providing even more fuel to a hot economy.
The Fed influencing borrowing costs by controlling a short-term lending rate called the federal funds rate to stimulate the economy has been holding that rate near zero since last year.
But in economic models, it's the inflation-adjusted or real interest rate that matters most because inflation reduces the value of future repayments.
Right?
Like if I buy a bond and then you're going to pay me off at a low interest rate in the future, if inflation eats the complete interest rate, I'm now paying you for the benefit of having the bond, which is really not what you're looking for.
So it's going to be difficult and painful to get out of this.
And meanwhile, you have the Biden administration continuing to push radical policy.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Janet Yellen is still pushing climate politics from the Treasury Department, which of course means more spending.
It means not following market forces.
Meanwhile, the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, an arm of the Treasury, plans to issue a framework of its expectations for how large banks should be managing climate risk, with detailed guidance to follow next year.
Again, all of this is not geared toward good monetary policy.
It's not geared toward good fiscal policy.
And Joe Biden is going to pay the price from this.
And then on top of that, of course, you have all of this, which has been excused by the government pointing to COVID.
But there's no excuse for that, as we'll get into in just one second.
First, let's talk about your sleep quality.
If you've been listening to the show for a while, you've probably heard me talk about my Helix Sleep mattress.
Helix Sleep is great.
But now, that's not the only place you sleep, right?
Or the only place you rest.
When it's time to chill out in the evenings, you're going to kick off your shoes, you're going to jump on that sofa.
Helix has gone beyond the bedroom.
They are now making sofas.
They just launched a new company.
It's called Allform.
They're making premium, customizable sofas and chairs shipped directly to your door.
So, what makes an all-form sofa really cool?
For starters, it's the easiest way you can customize a sofa using premium materials at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores.
You can pick your fabric.
It is spill-stain-scratch-resistant.
The sofa color, color of the leg, sofa size, and shape make sure it's perfect for you and your home.
They've got armchairs and loveseats all the way up to an eight-seat sectional, so there's something for everyone.
You can always start small and buy more seats later on if you want your all-form sofa to grow and change with you when you move.
All-form sofas are also delivered directly to your door.
In the past, if you wanted to order a sofa, you'd need to hire someone to come and assemble it in your home or break your back trying to put it together yourself.
All-form has simple, quick assembly.
No tools needed.
I've got an all-form sofa.
I've got the three-seat sofa with chaise in the sand color with espresso legs.
It is supremely comfortable.
And it's great looking.
It's super durable, which is great because my kids wreck everything.
If getting a sofa without trying it in store sounds risky, you don't need to worry.
You got 100 days to decide if you want to keep it.
More than three months.
If you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free, give you a full refund, makes a great Christmas present.
You have a forever warranty.
Allform is offering 20% off all orders for our listeners at allform.com slash Ben.
To find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com slash Ben.
All right.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is trying to claim, of course, that all of this is because of COVID.
That if it weren't for COVID, everything would be fine.
Well, here's the thing.
COVID is the reason that the economy had a massive artificial coma last year.
Which means that if you just leave people alone, the economy will go back to normal.
But Democrats were not interested in that.
Again, it was not billed back to where we were.
It was build back better blah blah.
Build back better was a bunch of garbage.
You have no idea how to build an economy.
An economy rests on fundamental precepts about human nature.
A well-planned economy is an economy in which nothing is planned.
A well-planned economy, ironically enough, is an economy in which you understand that the disparate sources of knowledge outweigh any particular person's expertise.
So having one person at the top of the economy dictating how funds are to be spent is a complete waste of time and a waste of money.
It is a misallocation of resources.
Countries that have centralized economies learn this in all the areas where they actually have centralization.
This is why social welfare countries, like the Scandinavian countries, rely on a capitalistic framework in order to actually make the money.
Then they proceed to tax the money and blow the money.
But you have to have disparate sources of knowledge providing for economic progress and production in order to have a growing economy.
But Joe Biden wasn't interested in that.
He thinks the economy distributes resources unfairly because they should be distributed according to race or according to victimization status in the victim hierarchy or whatever.
Joe Biden believes that he is the great master of fairness, and so he has intervened in the economy in dramatic ways.
And he has done so on the basis of blaming COVID.
But here's the thing.
COVID is, for all intents and purposes, not a government issue anymore.
There's a new study, it came out over the weekend, cited by our friend Marty McCarry from Johns Hopkins University.
It was released by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
And it found that there are confirmed cases of Omicron in now 23 countries.
How many of those cases have ended in hospitalization or death?
Zero.
The answer is zero.
Quote, all cases for which there is available information on severity were either asymptomatic or mild.
There have been no Omicron related deaths reported thus far.
As a friend texted me over the weekend, more people have been killed by Alec Baldwin than have been killed by Omicron at this point.
So Omicron is, in fact, it may be the solution to the pandemic.
If it's more infectious than Delta and it kills no one, that's a good thing.
That means everybody is gaining natural immunity with asymptomatic or mild infection.
So why are we panicking?
Well, we have to panic because the panic is baked into the cake.
Because again, at a certain point, this is no longer about protecting people.
At a certain point, that point came long ago, once we had the vaccines.
At a certain point, it's about control.
It's about maintaining a belief that centralized sources of knowledge are capable of fixing the world when that is just not true.
So over the weekend, CNN medical expert Jonathan Reiner calling for more measures with regard to COVID.
More measures with regard to COVID.
This is insane.
The Biden administration should mandate vaccines for air travel in the United States.
Vaccines are broadly popular in this country.
83% of adults have been vaccinated.
I can't think of another public policy measure in this country where you have 83% agreement.
So 17% of the United States essentially is blocking this notion of a broad vaccine mandate.
But unless we get more people vaccinated, this virus is not going to go away.
It's not going away anyway!
You all know it's not going away anyway.
It's endemic.
Every scientist says it's endemic.
But they're not even aiming for anything realistic at this point.
They're aiming for control.
You know what a federal vax mandate would do for flying?
You know what impact that would have on COVID?
Zero.
It would have zero impact.
You know why?
Because planes are not the chief vector of transmission.
In fact, staying in your home with your family is the chief vector of transmission.
If you get COVID, there's a good shot your spouse will get COVID and your kids will get COVID.
If you're on a plane, they've got HEPA filters.
Throughout the pandemic, I've been corresponding with heads of major airline industries and they've been providing me their data.
Airplanes were never a main vector of transmission.
In fact, I'm unaware that there are any cases in which a plane became a super spreader event.
Even though you are in a flying steel capsule in the sky that is filled with farts, even though that, you're still not going to get COVID flying in a plane compared to being in your own apartment or your own house with your family.
But they're still calling for more measures.
Why?
Because again, it's about blaming these other people.
Joe Biden on the economy wants to blame the Fed, even though it's his own policy that has led to the Fed doing what it's doing.
And were the Fed to raise interest rates rather dramatically right now, it would cut into the economic recovery.
And they know this.
It'll cut right into the unemployment numbers that Joe Biden is busy bragging about.
It'll cut into some of the stock market numbers that Joe Biden is busy bragging about.
And it will radically raise the price of all the debt that Joe Biden hopes to take in the future.
He's going to try and blame it on the Fed anyway.
But when it comes to COVID, they've got to blame somebody else.
They're blaming the 17% who are un-vaxxed.
Number one, we don't know how many of those people have already had COVID, which means they have natural immunity.
And number two, even if you're already vaccinated for COVID, you can get COVID.
I have friends to whom this has happened.
Many of them.
You can still pass COVID if you are vaccinated.
And yet they're still going to keep pushing.
Here's the NIH's Francis Collins saying, give yourself a Christmas present, get a booster.
Okay, unless you're over the age of 50, the data on getting a booster is pretty skimpy as far as lowering hospitalization and death.
Now, it may help you prevent in the short term, getting it in the same way that a flu vaccine might help you be prevented from getting a particular strain of the flu.
But it is not going to last forever because your antibodies wane over time.
Here is the NIH still pushing boosters, presumably for everybody.
When you look at the evidence that boosters do really give your immune system a chance to resist Delta and also very new data from the UK also resist Omicron.
Give yourself a Christmas present.
Go get a booster.
Don't wait.
Get it this week.
That sounds like a, that sounds, um, why are we, honestly, why are we focusing on boosters at the expense of the original vaccine?
The 17% who are unvaccinated are unvaccinated.
Everybody who's had two shots and is not particularly vulnerable, just like with the original COVID variant, those people are not in serious trouble.
Everybody who is over the age of 50, 65 maybe, particularly 65, you should think about getting a booster because apparently the effectiveness against hospitalization and death dropped from the 90s down into the 70s.
But again, you're talking about marginal decreases considering that a 70% reduction in hospitalization and death is still pretty good.
And beyond that, if you are young, you might get COVID.
You ain't gonna get hospitalized or die after you've been vaccinated.
That's what the stats show.
But they're still doing it.
And they're doing it with kids.
They're doing it with kids.
This is crazy.
In one second, we'll get to the continuing panic in Los Angeles with regard to school children, which is insane.
I have a close friend who Told me last week that he had COVID, and his wife had COVID, and then his baby had COVID.
And he got sick, and his wife got sick, and the baby had a runny nose.
You know why?
Because that's what's been happening the entire pandemic.
There are 73 million people in the United States below the age of 18.
And of those 73 million people, a grand total of somewhere between 10 and 20 healthy individuals have died from COVID.
And yet we're still supposed to panic.
We'll get to more.
The panic is the point.
And then Joe Biden wonders why his approval ratings are garbage.
Maybe it's because you made a promise and that promise cannot be fulfilled.
You promised you could fix the economy and you would change how economics works for everyone.
And it turns out all you did is just blow things up.
And you promised that you could get rid of COVID and you can't.
Now, listen, I'm not blaming you for not getting rid of COVID.
I'm blaming you for making a stupid promise, and you should be held to that stupid promise.
If I promise somebody that I'm literally going to buy the moon, and then I'm going to present the moon to them as a birthday gift, the big problem is not that I didn't present them the moon as a birthday gift.
The problem is that I'm an idiot for promising them the moon.
Joe Biden promised people impossible crap is what Democrats do routinely.
Some Republicans do it too.
We'll fix all your problems.
No, you won't.
No, you won't.
Because that's not the way life works.
We'll get to more of this in just one moment.
First, let's talk about the greatest gift of the holiday season.
I'm talking particularly for dudes, I'm talking about the greatest gift of the holiday season.
Ladies, get your man some steak!
Omaha steaks!
Check them out right now.
OmahaSteaks.com, enter Shapiro in the search bar.
You can save over 50% when you order the perfect gift package today.
So, what exactly is in that perfect gift package?
You got four bacon-wrapped filet mignons, four boneless chicken breasts, four Omaha Steaks burgers, four gourmet jumbo franks, four individual scalloped potatoes, four caramel apple tartlets, one signature seasoning jar, And free, eight Omaha Steaks burgers.
That's for $99.99.
That is a solid deal right there.
Omaha Steaks is ready to ship right now.
Order the perfect gift package today at omahasteaks.com.
Don't forget, you get eight free burgers when ordering if you use code SHAPIRO in that search bar.
And if you are a new customer ordering for the first time, enter SHAPIRO at checkout and get $20 off select packages.
Again, you're going to be saving 50%.
You're also going to get that additional Omaha Steaks burgers, eight of them free with your order.
Achieving gift and greatness with Omaha Steaks.
Incredible flavor, incredible value, 100%.
Guaranteed.
OmahaSteaks.com.
Keyword Shapiro.
Go check them out right now.
We're going to get into more from the COVID crazy left because it's getting worse and worse.
And again, it's not boding well for Joe Biden.
First, all over the country, people are waking up to the tyrannical nature of Joe Biden's vax mandates.
We here at the Daily Wire, we've been leading the charge from literally day one.
We said we were not going to comply and we sued the Biden administration.
We were the first in the nation to sue the Biden administration for their unconstitutional mandate.
We're getting closer to a million signatures on our do not comply petition every single day because people are realizing if we don't actively fight for freedom, the government will indeed take it.
The Biden-Vaxx mandates are falling down in court.
We are going to try and deal them the death blow with our lawsuit.
And the signatures that we get are demonstrating to the government that there are just too many Americans who are not going to comply for their nonsense mandates to actually effectuate.
We have a goal of reaching 1 million signatures, which would provide a major boost to our legal challenge.
We have over 800,000 signatures so far.
We need your help to cross the finish line.
Please sign the petition at dailywire.com slash do not comply, then share our petition with all your friends and family.
Let's send a message so loud the Biden administration cannot ignore us.
You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
So the COVID panic being driven by the left is again, not rooted in any data at all.
And it's crazy.
It's crazy.
There were reports over the course of the last week from people like Michelle Goldberg, who's a left-wing columnist for the New York Times, that kids in New York City were being forced in public schools to sit on the floor separate from each other while eating lunch.
I don't know why sitting on the floor would prevent COVID.
I don't know the scientific rationale behind any of this.
But Jen Psaki over at the White House, she says that parents really do appreciate these increased restrictions.
Parents appreciate it.
Have you met a parent, Jen?
Like anytime in here, you could actually speak to some American parents and ask whether they think it's a great idea to incessantly mask their five-year-old children and force them to sit on the floor amidst the dirt in order to eat their food.
I will tell you, I have a three-year-old who goes to school, sits outside for snacks and lunch, wears a mask inside, and it's no big deal to him.
I'm not saying that's the case for everybody, but these are steps that schools are taking to keep kids safe.
And I think the vast majority of parents appreciate that.
Uh, no.
The vast majority of parents do not appreciate that.
At all, at all, at all.
Which is why you're seeing populations fleeing from the Northeast.
I can't tell you how many people I've talked to, even in the past couple of months, who are looking at the insanity that is breaking out in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, when they're saying, I'm leaving.
I'm going to a free state where things aren't crazy.
And meanwhile in LA, hundreds of people are fired, online learning is set to return amid vaccine resistance at LAUSD.
So as a graduate of LAUSD, one of the worst school districts in America, I can safely say that this is a bad idea.
According to the Washington Post, the second largest school district in the United States is facing mounting woes over its COVID vaccine mandate, recently terminating hundreds of employees who refused to comply and failing to put thousands of unvaccinated students into online classes.
Board members of LAUSD voted Tuesday to terminate 496 employees who failed to get vaccinated ahead of the deadline.
We care deeply about all of our employees, said Interim Superintendent Megan Riley.
Parting ways with individuals who choose not to be vaccinated is an extremely difficult but necessary decision to ensure the safety of all in our school communities.
Really, why is it necessary?
Explain scientifically why it is necessary to fire people who have not complied with your vaccine mandate when we know that vaccinated people can pass COVID and we know that Obacron is coming, which is resistant in terms of vaccine transmission.
In addition, some 34,000 students are in violation of the requirements.
Per the district's vaccine policy, students 12 and older must be fully vaxxed by the start of the second semester in January.
Those who fail to do so will not be allowed on school campuses and will be referred to an online independent study program.
Which means, of course, that we are going to see some 35,000 kids just lost into the system.
Because, again, I'm not a fan of LUSD.
I think our public school systems are a giant failure.
You're now talking about kids who lost a full year of school last year and are going to lose another full year of school at a time when vaccines are not only widely available, but kids never suffered from this thing and the schools never should have been closed.
President Biden wants more people to do this.
He has called on state governors to impose COVID vaccine mandates for all teachers and staffers as school districts across the country have been requiring the shots in an effort to slow the virus's spread.
Such requirements are already established in Oregon, Puerto Rico, Washington State, and D.C.
In early September, L.A.
became the largest school district to take things a step further, requiring the vaccine for eligible students.
They're going to extend it probably downward in age.
If they're doing it for kids 12 and up, why not for kids 5 and up?
So they're going to completely brack L.A.
USD, which is, again, unintended consequences?
Fine.
Do it.
All the kids will end up in parochial school.
That's where kids will end up.
And you know what?
Good.
Because these public school systems suck.
They're terrible.
The only reason I'm angry about it is because there are a lot of parents out there who are paying a lot of tax money so their kids can go to public school.
And other kids can't even go to school because the morons in LAUSD have decided that your kid is at wild risk of COVID.
By the way, you see people on TV saying this kind of crap all the time.
You see commentators on TV, well, I have a three-year-old and I'm really afraid for my three-year-old.
Really?
Unless your three-year-old has a significant underlying condition, I have no idea why you would be afraid for your three-year-old.
I have a one-and-a-half-year-old.
I am not afraid for my one-and-a-half-year-old.
Not one iota of the time.
0% of the time am I afraid for my 20-month-old kid.
I'm not afraid for my 5-year-old.
I'm not afraid for my 7-year-old.
I'm not afraid for any of my kids when it comes to COVID.
You know why?
Because kids are not dying from COVID.
This lie that kids are in widespread fashion dying from COVID is insane.
Kids are dying from COVID in lower numbers than pretty much any other cause of death in the United States at this point.
And yet you're still going crazy because you got to maintain the lie.
You just got to maintain the lie.
And we can all see where it's going.
If you look abroad, you can see how crazy they've gone.
In Australia, they're rounding people up who are not vaccinated.
In Germany, there was tape that emerged over the weekend of the German police measuring the distances between people outside with folding rulers to make sure that you were a proper space away from people.
I mean, this video is insane!
They're literally walking around with sticks trying to measure the distance between individuals to ensure that you are far enough away from others.
Outside.
Have you seen the stadiums in the United States that are filled with people for college football and no transmission?
This is madness.
Americans are not into this.
And if you are into this, fine, stay in a blue state and enjoy yourself.
Well, maybe all of this has to do with Joe Biden's completely cratering approval ratings.
This guy entered office in the 50s.
He was given the gift of a vaccine that he did not develop.
There was a distribution plan that he did not develop.
He took advantage of that.
All he had to do was not be terrible at this.
It's incredible.
It really is in life.
It is incredible how much of being successful is just staying out of the way of success.
But people can't do it.
They got to get their grubby little hands in there.
And Joe Biden had to get his grubby little hands into the economy and into COVID policy.
He had to demonstrate that he was an important person and it made him feel important.
Well, guess what?
The American people are about to make him feel pretty damned unimportant in the midterm elections.
So Joe Biden decided he was going to go on with one of his late night sick events.
This one was Jimmy Fallon.
I remember a time when Jimmy Fallon used to be at least somewhat humorous and then Trump broke his brain.
And all you've got now is sort of the How much do you pay attention to approval ratings?
Well, not anymore.
Colbert knockoff interviews.
So here he was with Joe Biden doing an interview and and sucking up to him.
It was not good, guys.
How much do you pay attention to approval ratings?
Well, not anymore.
You can always my favorite thing about politicians is their tells.
They're really fun.
So you've got Kamala Harris' tell is the actual crazy laugh.
Joe Biden's tell is that after he thinks that he told a joke, he wipes his eye like this.
It's a thing that you watch for it.
It's kind of fun.
Okay.
And Jimmy Fallon's tell is that he has one of the worst fake laughs in the industry.
It's a real, I mean, it's like Kamala Harris level fake laugh.
Yeah, but it didn't stop there.
Then you had Jimmy Fallon.
Again, they're trying to prop up this old man because they got nothing, nothing.
So here's Jimmy Fallon praising Joe Biden for no reason anyone can discern.
A lot of Republicans and Democrats used to get really on well together.
For example, one of the reasons I'm a little bit late coming on is because, not coming on, but to do the taping here, is because I did Bob Dole's eulogy today.
He asked me in his deathbed whether I would do his eulogy.
We're friends.
We disagree, but we're friends.
We gave you a standing ovation because I go, here he is, he's bringing class back.
He's a classy guy, and you're bringing class back to the office, and I thought it was amazing that you did that.
It's so much class being brought back to the office.
By the way, in the same interview, Joe Biden started ripping on Republicans and on his political opponents as anti-vax crazies and suggesting that everything that's going on is their fault.
So much class.
So much class from Joe Biden.
Guess what?
The American people are not falling for this.
They don't buy it.
And here's the problem for Democrats.
They got nothing behind Joe Biden.
He's the only thing standing between them and complete collapse.
Kamala Harris is a disaster area.
And now her team is fighting back by saying that everyone who points this out is a racist or sexist.
Good luck with that particular line of argumentation.
According to the New York Times, addressing reporters at a meeting of the Democratic Governors Association, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina gave an emphatic answer when asked whether he expected Joe Biden to seek a second term and whether he believed that was in the best interest of his party.
I do and I do, said Cooper.
I fully expect him to seek reelection and I will support him.
In fact, we're going to win North Carolina for him.
But three minutes later, Cooper was sketching out what could be the makings of a Cooper for president primary message.
He trumpeted his repeal of the state's so-called bathroom bill targeting transgender people, an executive order granting paid parental leave to state employees, another order putting North Carolina on a path to carbon neutrality by 2050.
Publicly, Cooper and other Democrats are focused on what will be a difficult 2022.
However, it's 2024 that's increasingly on the minds of a long roster of ambitious Democrats and their advisors.
No one is interested in Kamala Harris.
She's a giant failure.
Pete Buttigieg is a complete nothing bag.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is 8,000 years old and blew it last time.
Amy Klobuchar has no juice.
Their bench is so weak.
It's so insanely weak.
And many of the people who theoretically might be better for them, you know, the moderates who might replace Joe Biden, people like Mitch Landrieu, former mayor of New Orleans.
That dog is not going to hunt in a radicalized Democratic Party.
So good luck guys. I mean, by the way, how bad are things for Harris? Jen Psaki was asked if Kamala Harris, who was, you remember, put in charge of Mexico policy, our border policy with Mexico, if she had ever been in contact with Mexico, ever. And Psaki was like, uh, no, I don't know.
Is the administration reaching out to Mexico, to partners in Central America this morning?
Does this cause for a certain re-evaluation of the strategy to deter migration?
It would really come through the Department of Homeland Security, that kind of outreach.
So I would point you to them for any more detail about a connection with the Mexican government.
Yeah, so we have no idea.
We have no idea whether there's been any contact with the Mexican government at all at the White House level.
So really, really solid stuff.
Again, the thing is this, the national policy the Democrats are pursuing, it's not that that national policy has created these crises all over the United States.
On a broad level, it's facilitated them.
But we don't have these crises down in Florida, right?
We don't have an economic crisis down in Florida.
We don't have a COVID crisis down in Florida.
Things are going pretty well down here.
We've got inflation.
Inflation is a national phenomenon.
It's not a regional phenomenon.
But a lot of the problems that the Democrats have created are local in nature.
The problem is that we can all see that the bad Democratic policy at the local level bled up to the national level, and then the Democrats at the national level attempt to impose it broadly.
So, for example, we now see the murder rates skyrocketing in major cities all over the United States.
Now, we don't live in a major city in the United States where we live.
We live in South Florida, but we're not living inside a major city.
We're not living in a major blue area, which means that we're not feeling the impact of this.
But when you turn on the news and you see a radical uptick in crime nearly everywhere that blue government predominates, you start to think maybe these people shouldn't be in charge of government policy.
By the way, how bad are things in Los Angeles, where I used to live?
Things are so bad in Los Angeles that the LAPD is warning people to stay away.
That's how bad things have become in Los Angeles, according to CBS News.
Murder rates continue to soar nationwide.
Portland, Oregon is grappling with a record number.
Austin, Louisville, and Rochester have all seen homicides more than double in just a couple years.
With violent crime rising in Los Angeles, the head of the police union warns, if you can, stay away.
We can't guarantee your safety.
It is really, really out of control.
We cannot guarantee your safety in Los Angeles?
My family and I escaped Los Angeles, and we've been telling people since, get the hell out.
That place is gone.
Is that the kind of government anybody wants nationally?
I have serious doubts.
So, Democrats have a choice.
They can either continue to pursue the policies they like, to their own political detriment, and turn themselves into a joke, or they can abandon that stuff.
I will give you one guess as to which way they're going to turn.
All righty, we will be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
First, let me remind you, you need to go sign our Do Not Comply petition.
We have close to 850,000 signatures on it.
Head on over to dailywire.com slash do not comply.
In the meantime, go check out The Michael Moll Show.
That's available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
♪♪ The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Elliot Feld.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
Production manager, Pavel Lydowsky.
Associate producer, Bradford Carrington.
Host producer, Justin Barber.
The show is edited by Adam Sievitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
Hair and makeup is by Fabiola Cristina.
Production assistant, Jessica Kranz.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright, Daily Wire 2021.
Dr. Fauci says that your unvaxxed kids might die.
Kamala Harris says that women in post-Roe America will die.
And Jussie Smollett is going to jail for pretending that he almost died.
▲
Export Selection