{"id":4320,"date":"2022-08-01T17:15:07","date_gmt":"2022-08-01T22:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.wpengine.com\/?p=4320"},"modified":"2022-07-31T10:41:08","modified_gmt":"2022-07-31T15:41:08","slug":"you-cant-blame-joe-for-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/?p=4320","title":{"rendered":"You Can&#8217;t Blame Joe for That"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As long as the United States as existed blaming the President for things that he didn&#8217;t actually do\/ control\/ contribute to has been one of our national pastimes.\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy to blame someone you&#8217;ve never met for all your problems.\u00a0 Social media makes this easier to do than ever.<\/p>\n<p>Joe Biden is certainly no stranger to public critique, having been in politics since the 70s.\u00a0 But now that he&#8217;s the President the attacks are faster and more furious than ever.\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy to poke fun at his age.\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy to laugh at his gaffes with teleprompters and with speeches in general.\u00a0 And up to a point, that&#8217;s par for the course.<\/p>\n<p>My issue is with the blame being placed at Biden&#8217;s feet inaccurately.\u00a0 Many people haven&#8217;t realized that the world we live in now is nothing at all like the world we lived in in the 70s, or even the 90s.\u00a0 The planet is more interconnected than it&#8217;s even been.\u00a0 While there certainly are issues that are nation specific- such as gun violence and abortion rights &#8211; the majority of the problems that are currently in the news are global problems with the contributing factors beyond our shores.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s look at gas prices.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve written a lot about this already.\u00a0 There are MANY factors that contribute to the price of gas, virtually none of which are under the control of the President, including OPEC production levels, refinery capacity, futures investments, and world events- including Putin&#8217;s invasion of the Ukraine.\u00a0 No, the US doesn&#8217;t not buy oil from Russia, but many European countries did.\u00a0 With the nearly worldwide boycott of Russian goods, there is now more competition for non Russian oil.\u00a0 Demand drives up prices.\u00a0 It&#8217;s economics 101.<\/p>\n<p>Now let&#8217;s look at inflation.\u00a0 COVID closures caused a lot of demand for many, many things (including gas, by the way) and so spending plummeted.\u00a0 That caused prices to go down.\u00a0 Now that the world is mostly opened back up again, demand is up.\u00a0 Ongoing supply chain issues increase demand even further.\u00a0 Higher demand equals higher prices.\u00a0 This is also economics 101.<\/p>\n<p>Both of these complex issues aren&#8217;t just happening in the United States.\u00a0 EVERY modern nation on Earth is experiencing these same issues, because the root causes are global.\u00a0 In terms of gas prices and inflation rates, the United States is about in the middle of the pack.\u00a0 We are not unique or special, or even close to the hardest hit.\u00a0 Blaming Biden for them shows a true lack of understanding of the world we live in.\u00a0 It might get you cheap laughs, but that&#8217;s it.\u00a0 And on one is impressed with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As long as the United States as existed blaming the President for things that he didn&#8217;t actually do\/ control\/ contribute to has been one of our national pastimes.\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy to blame someone you&#8217;ve never met for all your problems.\u00a0 Social media makes this easier to do than ever. Joe Biden is certainly no stranger to public critique, having been&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/?p=4320\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issues","category-things-that-make-you-go-huh"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/No-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}