We had near 0% inflation for more than a decade. Average all those consumer staples price increase across 15 years and it's still modest inflation that was weoponized, both by the GOP and also the news media (because ratings.)

Normal inflation is wages and prices both going up by a couple of percent a year, which is fine. 20%+ abrupt increase in prices without a corresponding increase in wages, not fine.

You realize that federal governments, Democrat or otherwise, have little to do with the price of gas, right?

(Thus the low comprehension level of many voters.)

I have no problem with people voting GOP, and am happy to debate Democrat vs Republican policies and economic impact, etc. Republicans certainly do some things better than Democrats. But this wasn't about policy. If Americans have so little values, and are so gullible, that they are willing to sell out to a man who is literally a despicable self-serving despot (the only reason he's not as bad as Putin or Xi is because he's restrained by the Constitutional structure), for a promise of cheap gas that Trump can't even fulfill (it may happen, but it won't be because of Trump, just like the price of gas going up in 2022 had nothing to do with Biden), well, that's a very sad statement about a large segment of the American people.

>You realize that federal governments, Democrat or otherwise, have little to do with the price of gas, right?

Indeed, the economy is practically a force of nature with countless levers and the federal government can only influence a small handful of them.

That said, when Trump argues "Drill, baby, drill!" and Biden and Harris shut down oil production and transport in the name of environmentalism, guess how that affects gas prices and the broader cost of living at large.

Not to mention America failing to police the world and maintain or establish peace will lead to higher costs of living. Note that Obama literally said on the record that America is no longer the world police, and Biden and Harris are more of that.

Democrat policies are not conducive to a better economy for the common man, and arguing that the stock market is at all time highs or the prime rate is coming down merely signals a harsh detachment from reality on the ground.

> America failing to police the world will lead to higher costs of living.

I don’t know what facts you’re basing this on but the US military action abroad is not correlated with higher standard of living in the US. In fact one could argue the opposite, but they’re not really interconnected.

> Drill baby drill

High oil prices are not because we’re not drilling enough. Oil production in the US is at an all time high and was higher under Biden than under Trump. (Not that I think it’s a good thing).

You need to reevaluate your news sources or do more research before you determine which set of policies are better for the common man as you put it.

>I don’t know what facts you’re basing this on but the US military action abroad is not correlated with higher standard of living in the US.

Wars lead to disturbed movement of people and goods, massive loss of lives, destruction of goods, destruction of infrastructure, destruction of production, and more. Wars are great for the military industrial complex and even moreso if you never have to take lead yourself, but it's hell for everyone else.

Pax Americana, the era in which we all live in today, is predicated on the US policing the world and maintaining or establishing the peace for everyone's (and chiefly the US's) benefit. The means can be either Soft Diplomacy or Bigger Gun Diplomacy, but regardless every single administration in recent history with the exception of Trump's first term has been a disaster for world peace and thus better economies and happier lives American or otherwise.

>High oil prices are not because we’re not drilling enough.

High oil prices are because we let OPEC strangle us all by our balls. Anyone paying even the slightest of attention to how oil pricing works will know that OPEC decides the price they want and then adjusts the production/supply to get it.

If we "drill, baby, drill" harder and harder then OPEC will be forced to produce less to maintain the price until they can't, at which point oil prices will come down until right before we also start bleeding red ink. We can crash that price even harder with government action to compensate the bleeding, too. Don't believe me? It's literally what China does with practically everything.

So I am going to sharply disagree with you: High oil prices are because we're not drilling enough. If Biden's actually drilling more oil than Trump, that just means Trump needs to drill even harder.

I think you need to update your understanding of the world. This reads like something from the 1980s.

The US has been a _net exporter_ of oil for some years, and we don't depend on OPEC and haven't in some time. (The only reason we import oil is because it's cheaper to import some oil and sell our oil at a higher price.) Very little of our oil comes from OPEC. We get 4x more oil from Canada than we do from OPEC.

War is hell, and on that I can agree with you. But "Pax Americana" hasn't been around for a long time, and especially not since we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, all the wars that we've been engaged in for decades now have been wars that we started. We're just not good at "establishing the peace" and we haven't been since the 1950s, or if you want to argue that we provided a "bulwark against communism" in the 70s and 80s, which has some merit except that communism failed because of economics not our global policing, then we haven't been "establishing the peace" since the fall of the USSR in 1991.