Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has claimed that President is leading the U.S. down the economic path of 'Argentina or Venezuela' with a record-setting budget and freewheeling monetary policy. On Friday afternoon, hours before the holiday weekend started – a slot usually reserved for uncomfortable announcements to the press – Biden unveiled his $6 trillion budget proposal for next year. This year's projected deficit would set a new record of $3.7 trillion that would drop to $1.8 trillion next year - still almost double pre-pandemic levels.
The national debt will soon breach $30 trillion after more than $5 trillion in already approved relief. Biden proposes steep tax hikes on businesses and the wealthy to fund the huge new social programs in his budget, but the government must borrow roughly 50 cents of every dollar it spends this year and next.
Government spending to tackle the COVID crisis - as well as Biden's newly-unveiled budget - have sparked fears that inflation could rocket and push up the cost of living for many Americans. 'The sad part to me, having spent my entire professional career as a pediatric neurosurgeon and being concerned about the welfare of children is seeing what we are doing to their future,' said Carson, who served in the Trump administration, in an interview with . 'These things can be done without consequences and it was Thomas Jefferson who said it is immoral to steal from future generations,' he said.
(Image: [[|]]) Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has claimed that President Joe Biden is leading the U.S.
down the economic path of 'Argentina or Venezuela'
(Image: [[|]]) The public debt is on track to remain above World War II levels for years
(Image: [[|]]) Annual deficits have been on the rise since 2015, with a big spike amid the pandemic.
Biden's budget proposal would break the deficit record set last year in the pandemic
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'It's exactly what we are doing, creating mounds of amazing debt that somebody is going to have to do with,' said Carson. 'Not only that, but currently, you look at the impact of flooding the system with money, but not having the equivalent abundance of services and goods – that automatically creates inflation, as Milton Friedman eloquently talked about,' Carson added. The Federal Reserve slashed its benchmark overnight interest rate to near zero last year and continues to flood the economy with money through monthly bond purchases. On Friday, a key measure of underlying inflation blew past the Fed's 2 percent target and posted its largest annual gain since 1992. In the 12 months through April, the personal consumption expenditures price index vaulted 3.1 percent, the most since July 1992, after rising 1.9 percent in March. 'It's almost as if we have read all the books and we have said, yes, we too want to have the same problems that Argentina had and that Venezuelan had, and all the countries who did the same thing had somehow we are going to be different,' Carson said. 'I don't think we're going to be different.
We are smart enough, and I think the average American person knows we are creating a monstrous problem for ourselves,' he added.
(Image: [[|]]) The M2 money supply, which includes cash, checking deposits, and easily convertible 'near money' is seen spiking last year as the Fed flooded the market with money
Argentina is a puzzling economic basket case that experts have long studied.
One of the wealthiest countries in the world in the early 20th century, the country suffered a dramatic reversal attributed in part to political instability. Suffering chronic high inflation and repeated defaults on the national debt, Argentina has seen its standard of living, as measured by per capita GDP, steadily decline in relation to other developed countries over the past century. Venezuela, meanwhile, is an unmitigated economic catastrophe.
Primarily reliant on oil exports, the country's socialist government has steered the country into a brick wall, and Venezuela has been in a state of total economic collapse since the mid 2010s. Roughly 90 percent of the population lives in poverty, and the country has suffered hyperinflation estimated as high as 80,000 percent annually in recent years. Biden inherited record pandemic-stoked spending and won a major victory on COVID-19 relief earlier this year. Friday´s budget rollout adds his recently announced infrastructure and social spending initiatives and fleshes out his earlier plans to sharply increase spending for annual Cabinet budgets.
(Image: [[|]]) A family is seen in a homeless encampment in Guernica, Argentina last year.
Suffering chronic high inflation and repeated debt defaults, Argentina has seen its standard of living decline
(Image: [[|]]) A homeless man searches for food in Caracas, Venezuela in 2019. Venezuela has been in a state of total economic collapse since the mid 2010s
With the deficit largely unchecked, Biden would use proposed tax hikes on businesses and high-earning people to power huge new social programs like universal prekindergarten, large subsidies for child care and guaranteed paid leave.
'The best way to grow our economy is not from the top down, but from the bottom up and the middle out,' Biden said in his budget message.
'Our prosperity comes from the people who get up every day, work hard, raise their family, pay their taxes, serve their Nation, and volunteer in their communities.' liondbet</a> i implore you to visit our webpage.