Author: Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
Should parents be allowed to opt their children out of readings of LGBTQ-themed storybooks? This is the question before the Supreme Court. The case comes from Maryland, where a coalition of parents from Montgomery County contend that requiring their children to participate in instruction that violates their religious beliefs violates their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion.
Activists have been working for decades to promote gay and lesbian views to young children in the public school system. Some of these materials have the obvious goal of indoctrinating students into this ideology. That is why the Becket Fund is representing families of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faiths in this case.
Eric Baxter (Becket) explained, “Cramming down controversial gender ideology on three-year-olds without their parents’ permission is an affront to our nation’s traditions, parental rights, and basic human decency.” He argued, “The court must make clear: parents, not the state, should be the ones deciding how and when to introduce their children to sensitive issues about gender and sexuality.”
This case, once again, puts the high court in the center of the culture wars. The justices earlier heard oral arguments in a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on transgender surgery for minors.
Critics argue that the Supreme Court should stay out of the culture wars. My response is that they would be more than glad to avoid such cases, if it weren’t for activists trying to inject their gay and transexual ideologies into grade school classrooms.
We can hope and pray that the Supreme Court will prevent these attempts to indoctrinate young minds and allow parents to raise their children without such interference. The justices need to bring some common sense back into the public schools of America.

Kerby Anderson
It didn’t take long before the media launched what John Nolte referred to as the Hoax Machine. He was referring to the way many in the media portrayed Elon Musk’s arm movement as a Nazi salute.
But later in his article, he provided a hoax list that included nearly 40 examples promoted by the mainstream media. Each hoax on the list has a link so you can check it out for yourself.
Many of them were about false claims about Donald Trump. A few examples are the “Very Fine People Hoax” and “Trump Trashes Troops Hoax.” Each of those have been debunked by knowledgeable people who were present at the time. Of course, we cannot forget many others associated with Trump’s first term, like the “Russia Collusion Hoax”
The pandemic brought many hoaxes. A few examples were the “COVID Lab Leak Theory is Racist Hoax” and “COVID Deaths are Overcounted is a Conspiracy Theory Hoax.”
Many hoaxes involved media correspondents rushing to false conclusions or repeating false allegations. A few examples were the “Covington KKKids Hoax” and the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax.”
And there was the prominent hoax involving Jussie Smollett. Of course, his hoax gained national attention because of who he was and what he claimed happened to him. In previous commentaries, I have listed, on a regular basis, the increasing number of fake hate crimes that misrepresent how Americans treat each other and waste law enforcement’s time and money investigating them.
The lesson here is to be skeptical and discerning when you hear or read something reported in the news or repeated on social media. The story, and the subsequent claims, may merely be another hoax.

Kerby Anderson
As I mentioned a week ago, President Joe Biden warned of the rise of oligarchs in one of his farewell speeches before leaving office. Apparently, the issue of oligarchs and Big Tech leaders is a theme that some in Congress plan to use this year.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Michael Bennet sent a letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. They criticized him for contributing to President Donald Trump’s inauguration fund. The Senators reminded him that, “Big Tech companies have come under increased scrutiny from federal regulators.” They expressed to him their concern “that your company and other Big Tech donors are using your massive contributions to the inaugural fund to cozy up to the incoming Trump administration.”
Sam Altman was quick to reply on X, “Funny, they never sent me one of these for contributing to Democrats.” He went on to explain that his “was a personal contribution as you state,” which is why he was “confused about the questions given that my company did not make a decision.”
Both points are relevant. He didn’t remember that any of his contributions to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris triggered such a letter. In fact, the editors of The Wall Street Journal reminded us that President Biden’s 2020 inaugural brought in $62 million. And the presidential campaign for Kamala Harris raised over $1 billion.
Second, he was making a personal contribution to the inauguration, and it had nothing to do with his company. Of course, the senators knew that but wanted to bully a Big Tech leader who has changed some of his giving habits.
When most of Big Tech lined up behind democrats, the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress were thrilled. Now that some are reconsidering their previous support, they are likely to get similar letters.

Kerby Anderson
What are the three hardest words in the English language? Perhaps you have heard that the three hardest words to say in the English language are: I love you. I have also heard some say that the three hardest words are: I was wrong.
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner devote a chapter to this question in one of their books. They argue that the three hardest words are: I don’t know. They lament that this is the case because it is impossible to learn everything.
Apparently, our inability to say we don’t know starts at an early age. There is the classic study of British schoolchildren who were given a story and then asked four questions about the story. Two of the questions were unanswerable. There wasn’t any information given in the story. Nevertheless, three-fourths (76%) of the students answered these questions anyway.
It becomes ever more difficult to say you don’t know as you get older. Children expect their parents to know everything, at least until they get to be teenagers. Then their parents are considered very stupid.
Government leaders and recognized experts are not expected to say they don’t know. And we have lived through a pandemic and then a political season where many of our leaders should have merely said: I don’t know.
Instead, they were confident about the value of masks and vaccines. They were confident that inflation was under control. They were confident about their proposed solutions to everything from rising crime rates to rising global temperatures.
Often these were merely opinions. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed, “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.”
That is why we need some skepticism and biblical discernment, especially when the so-called experts make such confident statements and predictions. Sometimes the best answer is merely: I don’t know.

Kerby Anderson
The term “equity” has caused great confusion, perhaps because many social justice warriors intend it to be ambiguous. Sometimes I have been told by my fellow Christians to stop criticizing DEI and equity because Christians should be for equality. Of course, that is not how the term is used.
We began to see its meaning during the pandemic. Noah Rothman reminds us that some public health experts talked about the notion of “grounding” vaccination access “in equity.” What that meant was to provide vaccinations first to the disadvantaged along with providing it to public servants.
Further back in line would be white people, which would include the elderly, who were at the greatest risk. According to one University of Pennsylvania ethicist, that was fine. “Older populations are whiter” because society “enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.”
The wildfires in Southern California provided another example. One newspaper editorial criticized the fact that some wealthy residents were able to hire their own firefighters but complained they didn’t suffer the same consequence of others. The real problem was the shortage of fire fighters, water, and common-sense fire management.
Heather Mac Donald addresses the use and misuse of equity in her book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. The subtitle of her book might seem like hyperbole until you dig into some of the stories she tells. The word equity shows up in science, medicine, music, and the criminal justice system.
We have seen this dangerous drift to equity. It is time for it to end.

Kerby Anderson
Here is a social statistic that should concern all Americans, and deserves attention from leaders in government, pastors in churches, and parents in the home. Young men are falling further behind. That is the title of a Wall Street Journal article by Rachel Wolfe.
“More women ages 25 to 34 have entered the workforce in recent years than ever. The share of young men in the labor market, meanwhile, hasn’t grown in a decade.” Place her statistics with another that I cited just a few months ago. America has 7 million young men (ages 25-54) who are not working and not looking for work.
One reason is attitude. Richard Reeves (president of American Institute for Boys and Men) explains, “The sense a lot of young men have is not being sure that they are needed or that they are going to be needed by their families, by their communities, by society.”
This leads to the phenomenon known as a failure to launch. “In Spanish, parents call it encaminado: making sure your children are on the path to an independent adulthood.” One in three young adults live with their parents. And young men are more likely to live with their parents than young women. Former Senator Ben Sasse wrote about this in his book, The Vanishing Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance.
Steven Malanga argues in his essay Unemployable that “a growing number of Americans aren’t simply out of a job. There are no longer fit for work.” Many young men do not have a good work ethic and haven’t been prepared by the schools for the labor market.
The crisis of young men in America deserves our attention. Government leaders and church leaders need to take note.

Kerby Anderson
Senator Rand Paul was on a TV interview with Larry Kudlow to talk about government spending. They began by acknowledging that we have a national debt of $36 trillion and a fiscal budget that needs to be brought under control.
Senator Paul believes the best benchmark is to only spend what comes into the federal treasury, but that hasn’t happened in decades. But he suggested that the first place to start would be to cut the hundreds of thousands of dollars allocated to study whether lonely rats use more cocaine than well-adjusted socialized rats. Or Senator Paul suggested we might cut the money allocated to study whether Japanese quail on cocaine are more sexually promiscuous. With a bit of sarcasm, he suggested there are a “few things we might be able to cut.”
Of course, these aren’t large cuts, which is why Larry Kudlow wanted to know if it were possible to save the money by not spending funds allocated but never used for COVID, or the Inflation Reduction Act, or even the CHIPS bill.
Senator Paul responded that there is a way to do this. It’s called recission. It was tried once in the Trump administration to send back $15 billion in unspent funds, but there were two Republicans who did not vote for it. He is convinced that perhaps now you could get 50 Republicans to vote for recission and cut $500 billion.
The other idea they discussed was impounding funds, but the Supreme Court ruled against President Nixon doing that. This current court might be willing to consider that process of impounding funds since it was done for more than a hundred years until the court ruled against Nixon in 1975.
There are ways to cut federal spending.

Kerby Anderson
In his last two presidential addresses, Joe Biden warned of the rise of oligarchs and the development of a tech-industrial complex. He reminded the nation of the farewell address of President Eisenhower, who spoke of a military industrial complex.
Noah Rothman observed that Democrats invented this “new bogeyman” only when some billionaires and Big Tech titans started to “support Republican politicians and their policy preferences.” He reminds us that Democrat leaders weren’t “all that vexed by ‘misinformation and disinformation’ when they were the ones improperly wielding the coercive power of the state.”
Victor Davis Hanson concluded that Biden’s attempt to copycat the warnings of Eisenhower failed because “to paraphrase a famous quip from 1988 Democratic vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, ‘President Biden, you’re no Dwight Eisenhower.’”
He also reminds us that “until November 2024, Biden had no problems with oligarchs. In fact, he courted and used them. And they, in turn, eagerly donated lavishly to his agenda.” Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did the bidding of the Biden campaign team in 2020 by pouring millions “into Biden-related PACs and voting groups to change voting laws.” In one of his last acts as president, Biden awarded George Soros with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Only now are these oligarchs dangerous because some voted for Trump, and a few will be working with the new administration. Big Tech has been guilty of censoring speech and promoting disinformation, but the former president and his party only noticed the problem when they were no longer in charge.

Kerby Anderson
Pornography and porn sites were the topic of the Supreme Court earlier this month. The key question was whether requiring age verification on a porn site violates the First Amendment.
Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is the case currently before the high court. Texas passed a law requiring porn purveyors to start using “reasonable age verification methods.” Other states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Virginia, Utah) have passed similar porn site age laws.
The Texas brief explains that the law “does not prevent adults from viewing pornography.” Instead, the law “requires online pornographers to take commercially reasonable steps to ensure that their customers are not children.”
The lead challenger in the case is the Free Speech Coalition. It is described as an “adult entertainment” industry group that argued that age verification is too great a burden on First Amendment rights. They also raised concerns about privacy and security risks.
Having a 21st century Supreme Court ruling on pornography is important. The court’s ruling in pornography and obscenity in Miller v. California came in 1973. Texas cites the case Ginsberg v. New York that dealt with selling magazines to minors, but that decision came down in 1968.
Technology has changed the world in the last two decades. Young people have access to pornography through computers and smartphones. The most recent survey found that a clear majority of children have a smartphone by age 11.
Here are two points I believe the justices should consider. First, children should be protected from the scourge of pornography. We know the dangers. Second, digital age verification is becoming common place. It places no significant burden on First Amendment rights.

Kerby Anderson
Charles Cooke recently asked, “Are Californians Near the Tipping Point?” He asked that question because of the reaction from many in Southern California to how politicians handled the devastating wildfires.
He begins by saying that he loves California and explains that he isn’t just saying that because he is about to criticize many of the political leaders in California. He devotes many sentences to list the many positives about the state and its citizens.
He then focuses on how California is badly run. He also says that isn’t just because he disagrees politically with California politicians. He explains that he doesn’t agree with the politics of Massachusetts, but he acknowledges that Massachusetts is “pretty solidly governed.”
With those two disclaimers out of the way, he concentrates on what California does poorly. The state “is run by people who are incompetent at the tasks of taxing and spending, passing and enforcing laws, representing their constituents, and dealing with emergencies.”
Put another way, “its politicians have forgotten how to do the basics. One can get away with a great deal of ideology, wastefulness, and self-indulgence if the schools are good, the roads are smooth, the police are allowed to do their jobs, the housing is affordable, and the natural disasters are addressed swiftly and sanely.”
Charles Cooke isn’t the only person wondering if California voters are at a tipping point. Of course, it is too early to tell if a disaster in 2025 will affect an election in 2026 or 2028. But we have seen how a poor performance in a presidential debate last year changed everything in the 2024 elections.
I predict that a big issue in future elections will be competence. Voters might be willing to get rid of incompetent politicians.

Kerby Anderson
Although Congress needs to reevaluate various programs like Social Security, it is unlikely it will do so for two reasons. First, it would be politically unwise to even modify any of the so-called “entitlement programs.” It is the third rail of American politics. Touch it and you die.
But the other reason isn’t political; it’s cultural. Americans have an expectation of retiring at age 65. Morgan Housel has a chart in his book The Psychology of Money that illustrates this. The labor force participation rate for men age 65+ was 78 percent in 1880 and only dropped to 58 percent by 1930. But Social Security changed all that. Today the labor force participation for men 65+ is 27 percent.
Social Security wasn’t intended to provide a pension for retirement. When Ida May Fuller cashed in the first Social Security check in 1940, it was for $22.54 (that would be $416 when adjusted for inflation).
Even before Social Security was implemented, many in the Western world began to believe retirement begins at age 65. Germany was the first nation to adopt an old-age insurance program. This was 70 years before President Roosevelt proposed the Social Security system we have today.
Some brave politicians have suggested we might at least raise the age of retirement. As Morgan Housel reminds us that “It was not until the 1980s that the idea that everyone deserves, and should have, a dignified retirement took hold.” But also reminds us that the 401(k) didn’t exist until 1978, and the Roth IRA was not implemented until 1998.
Congress needs to address the financial concerns about the future of Social Security, but politics and cultural expectations make it hard to do so.

Kerby Anderson
Yesterday, I talked about some of the transformations in 1776 that Andrew Wilson discussed in his book, Remaking the World. They are identified by the acronym WEIRDER. W stands for “western” and globalization while E stands for “educated” and the Enlightenment.
I stands for “industrialized” and focuses on the industrial revolution. One event was James Watt’s invention of the steam engine. Western society no longer depended upon muscle power or horsepower.
R stands for “rich” and focuses on the “great enrichment.” Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations in 1776. The industrial revolution and capitalism led to a significant increase in life expectancy and the rise of social development.
D stands for “democratic” and focuses on the American Revolution. Of course, the Declaration of Independence was ratified in 1776, and the Constitution starts with “We the people.” This Spirit of 76 has spread throughout the world.
E stands for “ex-Christian” and focuses on the rejection of Christianity. During this time, we see the rise of deism, agnosticism, and atheism. Although some believed the Bible, many others rejected the biblical view of God and the authority of the Bible.
R stands for “romantic” and focuses on the romantic revolution. This is when Rousseau developed the concept of self and expressive individualism. And the seeds of the sexual revolution in the 20th century were first sown in 1776.
Andrew Wilson catalogues these transformations but also believes there are many opportunities for Christians and the church in what is becoming a post-secular world. We need to speak truth into this post-Christian culture.

Kerby Anderson
The year 1776 changed the western world in significant ways. That is the conclusion of Andrew Wilson (pastor at King’s Church in London) in his book, Remaking the World. He was on my radio program to discuss his book.
He explains, “The big idea of this book is that 1776, more than any other year in the last millennium, is the year that made us who we are.” He describes it as “a year that witnessed seven transformations taking place—globalization, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Enrichment, the American Revolution, the rise of post-Christianity, and the dawn of Romanticism.”
He describes this society as one that, “relative to others past and present, is WEIRDER. Each letter is an acronym (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian, and Romantic). He concludes that “The vast majority of people in human history have not shared our views of work, family, government, religion, sex, identity, or morality.”
W stands for “western” and focuses on the issue of globalization. One key event is the voyage of Captain James Cook. His travels generated certain questions like: Why were some natives more advanced than others? Western society began to get to the deep roots of culture and wondered why Western society developed before other cultures.
E stands for “educated” and focuses on the impact of the Enlightenment. Obviously, the Enlightenment started nearly a century before, but one high point was 1776. That was the year that Immanuel Kant drafted his Critique of Pure Reason and the year that Edward Gibbon published his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Tomorrow we will look at other events in 1776 that led to the remaking our of world.

Kerby Anderson
Yesterday I talked about apples and inflation. There is another way to think about the inflation that has been part of our economy for the past 100 years.
The supply of U.S. dollars has been expanding on average about 7 percent each year for the last century. That means the value of dollars is cut in half about every 10 years. Just use the “rule of 72.” Divide 7 percent into 72. That means the half-life of the US dollar has been about 10 years.
We may not notice the decreasing value of dollars until we get even higher inflation. But think of what a 10-year-half-life for the dollar means to you. For me, it means that money I put into a Wells Fargo savings account when I was in grade school has been cut in half six times.
The U.S. dollar is still the reserve currency of the world. And yet this is what happens with the best fiat currency in the world. If you hold your savings in cash, you are losing value every year. If you hold some of your savings in assets, the value of the asset usually goes up simply because it takes more dollars to purchase it. But for it to appreciate, your asset has to be both scarce and desirable.
Now, imagine if you lived in Venezuela or Argentina or Lebanon or Turkey. If your country increases the currency each year by 18 percent, your currency’s half-life is 4 years. If your country increases the currency by 30 percent, it has a 2.5-year-half-life. That is why citizens in these countries can never get ahead.
When I hear people tell me that financially they are just “treading water,” I am tempted to tell them that they are really sinking. Printing more U.S. dollars makes everyone poorer unless they have assets appreciating faster than the money printer.

Kerby Anderson
Today the U.S. is getting a new president. Soon, Canada will be getting a new prime minister. The new prime minister may be Pierre Poilievre. He was recently asked what steps he would take to fix the damages done from inflation. Here is his answer:
“First and foremost, stop the overspending. Inflation, high taxes, deficits, high interest rates, are all symptoms. The disease is overspending. When governments spend too much money there’s only three ways to get it. One is to raise your taxes. The other is to borrow, which means that they’ll tax you more later on. And the third way is to print money. Now printing money seems like a painless way to pay for things.”
He then explained, “If you have 10 apples and $10 in the economy, it’s a buck an apple. If you double the number of dollars in the economy to 20, you still only have 10 apples, You’re not twice as rich. It’s just that each apple costs twice as much. And that is a tax on the working people because it chews up the purchasing power of your paycheck only to pay for government’s excessive government spending. And it balloons the asset values of the billionaires so it’s a real transfer from the have-nots to those who have yachts. Inflation is the worst and most immoral tax. It always results from government creating cash.”
His answer was both clear and correct. When government spends more than it takes in, the usual answer is to print more money. It really isn’t that complicated. We just need more people in leadership like him.
We need more politicians who understand why we have inflation and can explain the problem to the citizens. I must applaud his clear explanation and common-sense solution. We need more Canadian and American leaders like him.

Kerby Anderson
When I first started writing this commentary nearly two decades ago, the average woman in the United States had 2.1 children in her lifetime. This is what many demographers called “the golden number.” To sustain a population in any country, women on average need to produce 2.1 children. If that number is higher, the population increases. If that number is lower, the population decreases.
Years later, Lou Dobbs devoted an entire chapter in his book, Upheaval, to the subject of “Demographics and Destiny Disturbed.” He was on my radio program back then and talked about the fact that the fertility rate in America had now declined to about 1.7. He also lamented the abortions of over 60 million unborn.
But if you think America is facing a problem, consider Japan with a fertility rate of 1.39. It is imploding. By the end of this century, Japan’s population will be less than half of its current population. Japanese consumers are buying more adult diapers than baby diapers.
Other countries also face incredible challenges because of declining fertility rates. Greece has a fertility rate (1.4) equal to Japan’s fertility rate. Spain’s fertility rate is 1.12. The fertility rate of South Korea and of China is also 1.12.
China’s “one-child policy” meant “that as many as 400 million Chinese children were not born.” By the end of the century, the country will likely have about one-third of the population that it has now. It moved from a one-child policy in 2015 to a three-child policy in 2021. But the birth rate continues to fall.
Declining fertility rates illustrate once again that demography is destiny.

Kerby Anderson
How will the new administration deal with the China challenge? We can get some perspective from Senator Marco Rubio’s book, Decades of Decadence. He will soon be confirmed as Secretary of State. He exposes China’s attacks on four key elements of American strength: good local jobs, stable families, geographical communities, and a sovereign nation that serves as a beacon of freedom and prosperity.
He explained in his book that the U.S. and other Western countries made the false assumption that nation states would be more focused on economic interests and therefore would not go to war with each other. Politicians started making decisions that benefited this system and stopped making decisions about what was good for America. This empowered China, and now we are heavily dependent upon them for all sorts of essential goods.
We assumed countries would be doing what was good for the global economy and international order. Senator Rubio explained in my radio interview that “China didn’t get that memo, and Russia didn’t get that memo, and Iran didn’t get that memo, and North Korea didn’t get that memo.” Many countries have been operating in their national interest. Bringing China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) didn’t change China. It changed America.
We also need to address the myth that Chinese aggression is due to tensions between China and America that were created by U.S. foreign policy. It was convenient to blame Donald Trump for Chinese aggression. That argument no longer works. For the last four years we have seen the feckless Biden foreign policy. China has become more aggressive, not less. Trump wasn’t the problem. Chinese global intentions are the reason for its actions.
Donald Trump and Marco Rubio seem ready to face the daunting challenge of an overly aggressive China. They need your prayers.

Kerby Anderson
The recent Department of Defense report should concern all Americans. The authors conclude that China is engaged in the largest military build-up since Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Colonel Grant Newsham once served as the Marine liaison officer to Japan and is also a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. His book, When China Attacks: A Warning to America, documents Communist China’s ongoing covert war against the United States and its allies. He gave a sobering interview with WorldNetDaily about China’s military intentions.
He explained that “China’s military build-up has been going on for over 30 years – regardless of who has been in the White House – Democrat or Republican.” It is true that the Chinese Communist Party has been emboldened by American weakness and perceived decline. And he added that “the Chinese communists certainly did not fear the Biden administration.”
On the other hand, Newsham argued, “The first Trump administration was the first one in my lifetime that actually frightened Beijing.” But that did not slow down the Chinese military build-up.” He warns, “Beijing will not let up in its quest to be able to dominate – and defeat, if possible – the U.S. and the U.S. military.”
He is not the only person warning Americans about China. Gordon Chang, in his book, Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America, warns that “China has a plan to destroy America. Does America have a plan to defend itself?” Even leftists, like Martin Jacques, write about When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order.
The Trump administration must be ready to face the formidable China challenge.

Kerby Anderson
Throughout the 2024 campaign, President Biden and his administration argued that the economy was doing well. Many voters did not agree with their assessment. And even in the waning days of his administration, President Biden has argued that he is “handing the Trump administration a robust labor market.”
E.J. Antoni (Heritage Foundation) replies, “I’m sorry, I think that the Biden Administration’s own data contradicts that narrative.” He explains that the post-pandemic economic recovery wasn’t as robust as Biden argues. “There are actually fewer native-born Americans working today than there were before the pandemic in 2019.” Instead, the net job growth has gone to foreign-born workers.
Douglas Carr provides another example of economic misperception by posting numerous charts illustrating the impact of Bidenomics. For example, his first chart illustrates that many more American families were worse off now than a year ago, and this was worst for young adults.
Of even greater concern was his chart that documents the financial well-being of high-school educated Americans versus college-degree holders. His chart shows that the financial situation for Americans with just a high school degree has fallen to its lowest point in a half century.
Inflation over the last few years dropped average earnings for most Americans. He also quotes a study from the Brookings Institute that the “effects of rising prices have been even more pronounced for poorer families, and especially families of color.”
President Biden and his administration may believe the economy was good. But Americans were feeling pain at the pump, in the grocery store, and in their wallets.

Kerby Anderson
A week from now, Donald Trump will take office and the Biden presidency will end. Jeff Crouere put together a few statistics that puts some of the Biden presidency in perspective.
His legacy will last longer than his presidency since 235 federal judges have been confirmed while he was president. His total surpasses the total number of judicial confirmations during President Trump’s administration.
Congress also passed a bill that would have added additional judgeships to relieve some of the backlog in federal cases. Although the bill was passed by both houses of Congress, President Biden vetoed the bill, perhaps because Trump will now be in office and could nominate judges for those positions.
The totals on the economic front should concern all Americans. The Biden administration and Congress added an additional $8.5 trillion to the national debt. It now stands at $36.3 trillion, or over $323,000 per American taxpayer.
“Inflation and interest rates outpaced wage growth and families fell deeper into debt.” The average home is valued as 7.64 times “greater than median household income.”
According to a recent report from the House Committee on Homeland Security, 10.8 million illegal migrants entered this country from Fiscal Year 2021 through Fiscal Year 2024. And that number does not count the approximately 2 million who entered without encountering customs and border protection (the so-called “gotaways”).
This is the situation Donald Trump will inherit next week. I think it is fair to say that is not what the American people voted for four years ago and some of the reasons why they voted differently in 2024.