Biden should be good with one term
Joe Biden received 73 minutes of free advertising time Tuesday night for what was being billed informally as the launch of his expected reelection bid, better known as the State of the Union address.
He made a good case for the positives that have occurred during his first two years in office, such as the continued economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s record-low unemployment rates, a massive infusion of infrastructure spending, a bogged-down Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a return to decency and decorum in the presidency.
His critics will respond, “Yes, but at what price?” Inflation has been at record levels, eroding whatever wage gains have been realized. The rise in interest rates is still predicted to bring a recession. The federal debt is at $31 trillion and counting, having taken a huge bump as Congress and Biden overdid it with coronavirus relief funding. And while the president demagogues on Social Security and Medicare, nothing is being done to slow the march of these two entitlement programs toward insolvency.
One senses, however, that the length of Biden’s time as president will not be determined by an assessment of either his accomplishments or his failures. It will be based on an assessment of his mental and physical acuity, and a growing belief, even among his own party, that one term is enough for someone of his age.
The president will never be able to shake the perception that he is in decline. What 80-year-old person isn’t?
If Biden were to get reelected, he would be 86 before he finished a second term. No president before him has ever served into his 80s. Even his own party is ready to try someone younger.
According to a poll released on the eve of his State of the Union address, just 37% of Democrats say they want Biden to seek a second term. Those are the kind of pitiful numbers one would expect from the opposition party, not your own.
So far, Biden has not gotten the message. He thinks he can turn this perception around, but that is unlikely. When he ran for office the first time, many who voted for him worried that he was way past his prime, but they got behind him because he was the best option for rooting Donald Trump out of the White House. They may not do that again, particularly if Trump isn’t the GOP nominee. If the Republicans nominate someone more palatable to party moderates and independents, Biden will be toast. There just won’t be the same motivation to turn out for him as there was in 2020.
Biden can accept this reality and retire with dignity at the end of this term, or he can run again and be retired ingloriously by the force of the electorate. It would be less painful for him and better for his party if he were to end his half-century of government service voluntarily.
Tim Kalich
The Greenwood Commonwealth
A century of egg prices
Need a conversation starter? Here’s an easy one: The price of eggs. People simply cannot stop talking about how much the cost has gone up over the past year.
And they are correct: The national average price for a dozen eggs was $1.79 in December 2021. Today they are way more than twice as expensive, in the $4.50-$4.75 range.
The main reason is a nasty strain of avian flu that killed an estimated 29% of the egg-laying hen flocks in the United States. That loss of production wouldn’t seem to explain why the price of eggs has doubled, but The Washington Post, citing an agricultural economist, observed, “that’s exactly what you would expect with a product for which demand is relatively insensitive to price changes.”
Or, as columnist Megan McArdle noted, Americans are accustomed to eggs, and will keep buying them even at higher prices because there’s really no food substitute for them.
The good news is that farmers are rebuilding their hen flocks and egg prices are starting to come down. And McArdle makes a fair point when she says that even at today’s high costs, “eggs are still really cheap, historically speaking.”
Her Feb. 7 column on the Post website contained a bundle of fascinating information about how food prices and American dining habits have changed since the early 1900s.
Old cookbooks, those from 1950 and before, seem to consider both eggs and chicken as luxury foods. In 1896, McArdle reported, a pound of round steak was 35 percent cheaper than a pound of eggs. Today round steak is far more expensive.
In the 127 years since then, Americans’ large income increases, coupled with agricultural improvements, have greatly reduced the price of chicken and eggs.
In 1901, according to an economist, the average family spent 42% of its money on food. In 2021 that average was just 10%.
“Advances in food processing, coupled with a century of economic growth, have liberated almost 35 hours a week (for preparing meals), and a full 30 percent of our incomes, to spend on something else,” McArdle wrote.
Chicken and egg prices were among the foods whose relative prices declined greatly, largely due to innovations like raising chickens indoors to reduce the threats of disease and predators. Breeding programs helped today’s average hen lay nearly 300 eggs per year, compared to about 150 annually in the 1930s.
In 1905, McArdle wrote, the average male factory worker earned enough to buy 41 cartons of eggs a week. Today’s average worker could buy 275 cartons per week, even at the higher prices.
“It might help to remember that however poor you feel, your ancestors would have taken one look at your grocery cart and declared you rich beyond their dreams,” McArdle observed.
It’s a good look at how American innovation through the decades has paid off so handsomely. But the price of eggs is still ridiculous. Ask anybody. Those rebuilding hen flocks cannot increase their production quickly enough.
Jack Ryan,
Enterprise-Journal
