The growing case that immigration-fueled housing prices are driving inflation.
As former Clinton staffer and writer William A. Galston wrote for the liberal Brookings Institute website last month, inflation is "President Biden's biggest political problem." Around that same time, I saw an interesting Tweet from Roosevelt Institute scholar Mike Konczal breaking down different aspects of the inflation measure (CPI).
The graph's rising trendline for housing's contribution to inflation corresponding closely with the beginning of the Biden administration caught my eye:
There have been some troubling signs in the relationship between housing and immigration, in spite of record housing starts. It has long been recognizable that future demand for housing is driven almost entirely by immigration.
Is there also evidence that those immigration-fueled housing prices are driving inflation, even as Wall Street Journal-types complain that rising wages are the culprit?
Well, yes. Kathy Jones, a chief strategist at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, noticed last week:
For those who would prefer not to have to wade upstream into macroeconomic theory against most of the punditry in order to live a striving and optimistic American life, these graphs and terms may fall somewhere between esoteric and ethereal. Which makes it easier to avoid a major media discussion of the topic, as per Eric Weinstein's concept of the "Gated Institutional Narrative."
Nevertheless, I couldn't help but notice that the Mark Zuckerberg-backed, pro-amnesty and mass immigration-pushers at FWD.us immediately tried to put this potential fire out... ironically by gaslighting that more immigration would actually help tame housing price-driven inflation:
This delusional spin was too much for veteran economic journalist John Carney, whose mocking response rested on the unrepealable law of supply and demand:
And so, again, we have to ask "which way" should we go? Now, on inflation, as with home price affordability and the availability of the American Dream, we start to see the choice more clearly. We must see to it that D.C. brings illegal border crossing to an end, and reduces legal immigration to a level that better manifests our national interest.
ANDREW GOOD is the Director of the Media Standards Program for NumbersUSA
