Despite our "anxiety" about high gas and food prices, Joe Biden says we need to cheer up: Americans are "more financially comfortable" than at any time in the past decade.

According to the White House statement he read out from his vacation lair at Delaware's tony Rehoboth Beach:

The job market is the strongest it's been since just after World War Two.  We've got more evidence of that today.  We learned that in May the economy added another 390,000 new jobs, bringing the total since I took office to 8.7 million new jobs — an all-time record.

We learned that more Americans entered the labor force in May.  In fact, working-age people have come back into the workforce at a faster rate in this recovery than at any point in the last 40 years. ...

But it isn't only about jobs.  Since I took office, families are carrying less debt; their average savings are up.

A recent survey from the Federal Reserve found that more Americans feel financially comfortable than at any time since the survey began in 2013.

The dotard-in-chief was commenting on Friday's monthly jobs report that revealed a 3.6% unemployment number, which is no match for the October 2019 3.5% unemployment number under President Trump's administration and didn't include a side of high gas prices or missing baby formula on the store shelves.  What Trump's numbers included were tax cuts, rising wages, and high positive GDP growth.

Joe Biden's last GDP printout?  Negative 1.5% in the first quarter of 2022.  But pay no attention to that sum total of what's going on in the economy.  Americans, as Joe says, are "financially comfortable."

So let's take a closer look at Joe's claim about that, starting with the much-touted unemployment and work participation number.  Start with economist Brian Wesbury, who knows the score on this data:

For the record, we have not created “new” jobs in the past 18 months. People who were laid off during the lockdowns are now coming back to work. We still have fewer jobs today than we did in early 2020.

— Brian Wesbury (@wesbury) June 3, 2022

Biden's entire statement was a mix of truth tainted by lies.  His claim about Americans being "financially comfortable" comes from a limited survey from the Federal Reserve, from a limited pool of consumers.  Joshua Young at the Post-Millennial points out the obvious problems with it:

The survey in reference is the Survey of Consumer Finances where families volunteer for two hours or more of questioning. The survey is conducted every three years from a random sampling of anywhere between 4500 and 6500 families.

Sound like a recent report, given that it was done over the past three years?  And are there a lot of families out there with two to three hours to spare for a survey?  Or might that be limited just by its very time commitment to people who are already financially comfortable?  Doesn't sound like a good one for hourly-wage workers who are hardest hit by now-8% Bidenflation and have to work extra hours just to keep their heads above water.

There's also this:

Employment is almost back to pre-pandemic levels -- but the jobs have changed.

via @BudgetHawks/@katekgen pic.twitter.com/nknAJE3TnL

— Marc Goldwein (@MarcGoldwein) June 3, 2022

Meanwhile, inflation continues to gnaw at consumers, making it the number-one issue for voters in the coming midterms.  You can't be financially "comfortable" if you expect inflation to destroy your earnings and savings every time you look ahead.  In markets, expectations are everything, and the expectations that come of inflation are high-anxiety stress, which doesn't fall into the category of "financially comfortable."

How are those ever-shrinking pay packages keeping up with inflation?  Biden insists that Americans have lots of money still in savings based on those COVID stimulus checks. 

Since I took office, families are carrying less debt; their average savings are up.

This again seems a rather delayed bit of data.  Lately, we see now that Americans are dipping into their credit cards to keep up, and many can't keep up from there.

According to USAToday:

Consumer borrowing is surging as inflation hovers near 40-year highs and Americans resume pre-pandemic activities like traveling and dining out, posing risks for lower-income borrowers.

According to USAToday:

Consumer borrowing is surging as inflation hovers near 40-year highs and Americans resume pre-pandemic activities like traveling and dining out, posing risks for lower-income borrowers.

The USAToday report (emphasis added) notes that for a while there were savings, but now we are seeing them rapidly vanish. 

Total household debt is still historically low, but debt payments have edged up recently to 9.3% of personal disposable income in the fourth quarter, according to the Federal Reserve. By comparison, debt payments comprised 9.9% of income in late 2019, just before the pandemic, and 13.2% in 2007, prior to the Great Recession

During the health crisis, U.S. households saved lots of money by hunkering down at home and socking away stimulus checks, money from an expanded child tax credit and other federal aid. That allowed them to whittle down debt.

Americans' financial health has "gotten notably better," says Matthew Mish, head of credit strategy for UBS. The recent debt run-up "is just starting from such a good place."

As Ernest Hemingway apocryphally said of bankruptcy, it happens "gradually, then suddenly."

Biden also touted business start-ups, as if his demonization of "the rich" would create such an atmosphere naturally.

That confidence and comfortability is part of the reason why Americans applied to start more new small businesses last year than ever before in American history.

More likely, the businesses started were because people couldn't get jobs.

But even Biden's claims are wrong.  Here's a headline from TechCrunch that ran this morning: "Lots of sellers, fewer buyers, in markets for startup shares."

Doesn't sound like much of a bull market for startups.

What we have here is pure garbage — Joe Biden gaslighting the public into claims that all's fine in the economy instead of the severe structural problems now appearing based on his high-tax, high-government spending, and green energy agenda.  None of that is a recipe for an economic boom.  Biden though he would have you think it is and is shameless enough to repeat the opposite of what Americans are seeing with their own eyes in the economy.  Like Goebbels, he's placing his betting money on the idea that if a lie is repeated often enough, it will become "truth."

It doesn't work that way in the economy that voters actually live in.

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.