Thanks to Bidenflation, Consumer Sentiment Hits a 10 Year Low

The University of Michigan recently released a report that details changes in consumer sentiment for November. The report, which details how consumer sentiment fell during the month and puts that in historical perspective, is bad news for President Brandon, as it shows that Americans are growing increasingly uneasy as his policies ravage the economy.

Specifically, Richard Curtain, the report’s author, notes that rising, obviously not-transitory inflation is on the mind of many consumers, pushing consumer confidence down:

Consumer sentiment fell in early November to its lowest level in a decade due to an escalating inflation rate and the growing belief among consumers that no effective policies have yet been developed to reduce the damage from surging inflation.

Curtain then adds details, showing how inflation’s impact on the average consumer’s life is causing a plummet in consumer confidence:

One-in-four consumers cited inflationary reductions in their living standards in November, with lower income and older consumers voicing the greatest impact. Nominal income gains were widely reported but when asked about inflation-adjusted gains, half of all families anticipated reduced real incomes next year. Rising prices for homes, vehicles, and durables were reported more frequently than any other time in more than half a century.

For reference, a recent Consumer Price Index update found that inflation breached the 6% mark year over year, the highest rate in over 30 years. Team Biden appears to have done little in response other than pushing a $1.5 trillion bill that will pump yet more printed dollars into the economy.

As a result, consumers are recognizing that the “transient” inflation might not be so transient and those inflation-related lifestyle reductions might be around longer than the Fed would have them believe.

Those well-founded worries about Bidenflation mean that consumer expectations and confidence have sunk precipitously, as this chart, provided by the report, shows:

Consumer sentiment dropped 13% year over year and nearly 7% month over month (October-November). Consumer views of economic conditions dropped nearly 16% year over year and about 6% month over month. Consumer expectations dropped 10% year over year and a massive 7.5% month over month. Those are precipitous declines.

And it’s important to remember that the year-over-year changes take the economic disaster that was 2020 into account. Consumers that were already worried about the economy due to the Covid lockdowns and/or massive government spending in 2020 not only didn’t change their minds, but also grew even more worried about the state of the economy.

However, those estimates of consumer sentiment must be taken with a grain of salt, as they’re heavily dependent on partisan affiliation, as Curtain notes:

Partisans aligned with the President’s party have adopted very positive moods, and those in the opposing camp very negative moods. As a result, partisan supporters of one or the other presidents either mentioned or ignored rising home and stock values, inflation and income growth rates, or mentioned or ignored employment or unemployment rates, and so forth. The partisan differences in perceptions were not minor, but were large and equal in size (see the table). They were larger than differences across income, age, and education; moreover, those partisan differences nearly equaled the entire span between cyclical peaks and troughs.

So, while consumer sentiment is certainly quite low, some of the precipitous decline might reflect people growing disillusioned with President Brandon rather than pure economic concerns. Still, however, the decline is major and, according to Just the News, is a 10-year low in consumer sentiment.

By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.