OPINION:
“The future ain’t what it used to be,” the inimitable Yogi Berra is credited with quipping. He couldn’t have guessed how right he would be. The future taking shape on the horizon appears to be a dime or two short of a dollar. Americans, known for the bootstrap attitude that has put them on top of the world, surprisingly are right in the middle of global economic gloom. President Biden’s strategy of loading the nation with new tax burdens promises to deepen the despair.
Despite anticipation that human achievement is primed for a quantum leap, the 21st century’s unfolding third decade finds a world coping with disappointment. A new Pew Research Center survey reveals majorities in select developed nations wax pessimistic about the financial well-being of the next generation. Uncharacteristically, Americans are likewise feeling trapped on a plateau of progress.
Leading the ranks of the doubters is Japan, with a preponderant 82% of respondents asserting that when their children grow up, they will be worse off than themselves. Only 12% believe their offspring will have it better. France, Italy, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom and Australia all fare worse than the United States in the annals of despair. Nonetheless, Americans suffering financial frustration outnumber their money-assured neighbors, 72-27%.
In all, 15 nations boasting relatively modern economies tilt the Pew survey needle toward financial cynicism before Sweden breaks the mold with its optimists outweighing their opposite numbers by a scant 1%. Curiously, Israel, perpetually imperiled by its Arab neighbors, is the most upbeat, with citizens confident in their children’s future overwhelming the dubious 42-27%. Moreover, the Jewish nation is the only one of 19 studied that displays a 2022 outlook brighter than the previous year.
Surveyors did not venture to psychoanalyze the reasons for deepening gloom around the world, but commonsense Americans don’t need to be told what ails them. As they seek to move past the agony of a million-plus COVID-19 deaths, hundreds of millions are now grappling with the pecuniary regrets of “Bidenflation,” defined on trendy T-shirts as “the cost of voting stupid.”
On top of the sharpest hike of prices in 40 years, Mr. Biden recently paused his August vacation just long enough to sign the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is expected to rake in an extra $600 billion from rich and poor alike, once newly recruited legions of tax auditors fan out to glean the fruited plain.
Perhaps most economically damaging among new levies is $225 billion expected to pour in from a 15% minimum tax on large corporations. Shrinking profits mean fewer funds for research and development and a downturn in new products that power the U.S. economic engine. With the U.S. Department of Labor reckoning $163 billion in COVID relief funds disappeared into the black hole of fraud, the public has little reason to doubt that Uncle Sam will squander hard-earned tax dollars on foolish boondoggles.
President Biden’s policies promise to shortchange the nation’s financial future and mire Americans in the same economic gloom that is afflicting the world.
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