#Beware Joe’s inflation tax and other commentary

Economy watch: Beware Joe’s Inflation Tax

“The invisible tax of rising inflation will do far more to harm working and middle-class Americans” than President Biden’s proposed tax hikes, fears Kristin Tate at The Hill. “Inflation has reached its highest point in years, and will likely reach the highest in two generations.” Prices for everything — food, gas, lumber, homes, cars — are up and expected to get even higher. What’s fueling inflation? The Federal Reserve’s massive printing of money and government spending. “The Fed nearly doubled its bond purchases since the beginning of the pandemic, pumping almost $4 trillion into the economy.” Worse, the government doesn’t seem concerned. “The president appears bound to repeat many of the most painful mistakes” of the 1970s — “mistakes that led to increased economic dysfunction” and “a severe series of recessions.”

Education desk: The Kids Keep Losing

The city Department of Education’s cancellation of Christopher Columbus Day touched off a “squabble,” but the holiday got renamed and there will be no classes that day — though, warns City Journal’s Bob McManus, fewer classroom days is “the last thing” kids need after COVID. Then again, “quality instruction was hard to find even before the pandemic.” And it’s not surprising that Columbus-cancellation passes for substantive policy debate: “Nobody has a stomach for real issues,” such as “the fact that a vast majority of the city’s African-American students come from single-parent households, that most Asian students do not — and that this, rather than racial bias, doubtless drives disparate academic outcomes.” No, “it’s easier to cancel Christopher Columbus and continue with business as usual.” Even if “the kids lose.”

From the right: GOP Fate Rests on Trump

“Sometime in 2023, Donald Trump will presumably make the most momentous decision by a single person affecting the fate of the Republican Party in decades”: whether to run for president again, writes Rich Lowry at Politico. “That will determine who’s the frontrunner (obviously Trump, if he’s a go)” and “the internal GOP debate.” If does he run, he’ll presumably “blot out the sun.” Yet while Trump’s “continued sway has been a boon to Trumpists,” it’s “a problem for Trumpism, at least if that term is to mean anything more than personal loyalty to the man himself.” Why? Because it “risks overshadowing and distorting the development of the populist wing of the party” — which “should be about more than Stop the Steal and adherence to one man.”

Libertarian: Gas Shortages Are Temporary

Thanks to hackers who “seized control of a major pipeline” in the Southeast, thus cutting off gasoline supplies, some motorists saw some gas stations “run dry” — yet there’s really no need for panic, assures Josiah Neeley at Reason. “The Colonial Pipeline hiccup has reminded us just how important our often-invisible infrastructure is to our daily lives,” but “existing gasoline stocks in most places should be sufficient to cover a week or two’s worth of demand, by which point the pipeline should be operational again.” Also noteworthy: “Government restrictions on energy infrastructure such as pipelines” can worsen such problems. But the disruptions we’ve seen, “while annoying, don’t signal an imminent ‘Mad Max’-style future for America.”

Conservative: Prez Is Wrong Across the Board

“Government figures show that the Biden administration is getting it wrong on the border, getting it wrong on the economy and job creation and getting it wrong on inflation,” marvels National Review’s Jim Geraghty. President Biden says the surge of migrants at the border happens every year, but it’s “a load of bull.” On April 30, Biden said March’s numbers were “way down,” that he’d “gotten control” — yet April’s numbers topped “the previous month’s record.” Meanwhile, inflation hit 4.2 percent before seasonal adjustment, the largest 12-month hike in prices since 2008. Car and truck prices rose a whopping 10 percent in April, the largest one-month spike in 68 years.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Page