Reason
While Ford’s proposals had some basis in economics—energy and food deregulation should result in more supply—pins and stickers couldn’t change incentives or reduce demand. Alan Greenspan, freshly minted as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers when the WIN campaign began, later wrote that it was “unbelievable stupidity.” Joe Biden was serving his first term as senator at the time, and The Washington Post says he “criticized Ford’s economic plan as trying to fight inflation with slogans.”
Now Biden faces his own inflation dilemma. In June 2022, prices were 9.1 percent higher than 12 months before, a 41-year high reaching almost back to Ford’s administration. Food and energy price hikes were again the primary symptoms of inflation, with both categories seeing their largest increases in decades.
Ford blamed foreign oil-producing nations for high prices. Biden blames oil companies and gas stations. Ford was in the midst of a recession with 6 percent unemployment. Under Biden, the unemployment rate was just 3.6 percent as of June, with the economy dipping into a recession.
Perhaps Biden is similarly unlucky to have been elected in the midst of a pandemic. The Federal Reserve also deserves blame for what Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane says was a “major institutional failure” to predict high inflation and raise interest rates sooner. But Biden is responsible for the last and largest round of stimulus checks, and he refuses to take the limited executive actions available to him: cutting tariffs and encouraging domestic oil and gas production.
