Support for Harris is Leading Millennials and Gen Z to Their Jimmy Carter Moment
I’m big on context.
While you may speculate and offer conjecture, you can never truly understand an experience from another person’s perspective until you have lived it yourself.
Context is one of the main reasons why children grow closer to their parents as they age. It is a well-known adage that adolescents have all the answers, but as adults, they realize they hardly know the questions. That maxim is a direct result of gaining context.
And so, I am saddened to say that I believe that America may not right itself until millennials and Gen Z adults experience their Jimmy Carter moment and gain context.
History Rewrite
One of the most unsettling presidential terms occurred between 1977-1981, when an unknown peanut farmer turned governor from Georgia took the oath of office. Over the course of the next four years, Jimmy Carter’s ineptitude inflicted a significant amount of misery on the American people that mirrors our current situation in chilling detail.
Despite the effort of leftist search engines to rewrite the past, those who survived the Carter years remember his bumbling incompetence that led to one of the worst economies in American history. Carter ushered in a nightmarish era of 18% inflation, 22% interest rates and 7.2% unemployment, resulting in a misery index of 22, the highest in history.
There were long gas lines caused by Carter’s inability to accurately assess the situation and remove oil and gas price controls in an environment of rising global oil prices. It was virtually impossible to get a loan to build anything, and first-time homebuyers were unable to qualify for a mortgage without a builder interest rate “buy down,” which sounded great at the time of purchase but often led to foreclosure as mortgage payments went up every year on the reset.
I was fresh out of school and had a job with a construction company at the time. New housing starts were tracked through the “Dodge Reports,” a batch of individual listings sent out every week to subscribers. Usually, the Dodge Reports package was thick and robust, but by 1980, all the starts in a city for a week could be listed on a single piece of paper. Some weeks there were no Dodge Reports at all.
On the rare occasion they broke ground on a new house, it was always a mansion being built by some rich guy paying cash. During the bidding stage, the property would be crawling with every starving contractor in the city. Everyone knew the odds of landing the contract were bleak, and even if a company was lucky enough to get the job, it was more about keeping the crew working than making a profit.
Foreign policy wasn’t any better. Carter was perceived as weak and feckless, which emboldened tyrants to exploit America’s vulnerabilities. In 1979, a group of Iranian radicals stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and seized 66 U.S. citizens. The Americans were held for 444 days. During that period, Carter approved a rescue mission that went awry, resulting in a helicopter crashing into a transport. Eight American servicemen were killed.
We were a global laughingstock.
It is no coincidence that the hostages were released on the day Reagan took office in 1981.
Our Juiced-Up Economy Hides the Rot
The Covid pandemic, which began in late 2019, ended from a practical standpoint in 2022. The idiotic decision by Dr. Anthony Fauci to shut down America for several months drove unemployment up to 14.7%. These ill-conceived actions should have plunged the economy into a deep, enduring recession that might have triggered a depression. However, the Trump government created a massive relief package of $2 trillion, giving every adult $1200 and $500 for children. Later, this was followed up with another $484 billion for small businesses and hospitals.
Recognizing the power of free money, newly elected President Joe Biden cranked up the printing presses and gave away another $2 trillion in 2021. By 2022, unemployment had returned to around 4%, but the effect of all the new money in the economy caused a dramatic spike in inflation, which forced the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates 11 times in the latest cycle.
While the enormous surge in federal expenditures, from $4.4 trillion in 2019 to $6.5 trillion in 2020, can be justified by the hardship inflicted by Covid, what the Harris administration and complicit media would rather not discuss is the fact that spending never returned to pre-pandemic levels.
You heard that right.
In every year since 2019, the government has spent an average of $2 trillion more than 2019, which was, by the way, already a historical high. That means, the government has added $8 trillion in “hidden” stimulus to the economy under Harris.
It’s the equivalent of economic mainlining, and it will have consequences. Already, the interest on the $35 trillion national debt is over $1 trillion annually and bigger than the Department of Defense budget. This creates a spiraling effect. The more interest that’s added to the debt, the greater the debt becomes, which inflates next year’s interest charge, and on, and on.
Despite the Stimulus, Life for Ordinary Americans gets Worse
As more money is printed, the value of existing money declines. As inflation rises, those with money take advantage of higher CD and Treasury rates, while those with no money get clobbered with higher credit card rates. In fact, credit card balances are up 5.8% compared to last year, and total American credit card debt is at a historical high of $1.14 trillion.
Meanwhile, rent, food, energy and insurance have become so expensive, families are forced to cram more people into less space and eat less healthy food.
A Jimmy Carter Moment Will Change Generations
For those who lived through the Carter era, the signs of striking similarity are obvious. The only difference is Carter cared enough about the country to accept the pain of his failed policies instead of kicking the can down the road when the consequences will be much worse.
The hope is that the American people are wise enough to smell a rat when the stench is in the air. While Democrats are masters at gaslighting, the grim reality of a rotted economic foundation is felt every day by most average Americans.
Hopefully they vote for a change in November, because if President Harris gets a second term, the American people will be wishing things were only as bad as the Carter years.
But ultimately, maybe that is what it will take to change the mindset of two generations.
I sure hope not.
