Friday, March 29, 2024

Steve Wynn: “Real inflation is much higher than they say it is”

The front page of the Drudge Report today links to an article reporting on an interview businessman Steve Wynn, founder and CEO of Wynn Resorts, gave to a local PBS station in Nevada.  In it, Wynn offers a more cogent and coherent analysis of the miserable state of the economy and its impact on working families than we have heard from any of the Republican presidential candidates to date.

Here’s an excerpt:

Well, the idea that America is in the midst of a great recovery is pure fiction. It’s a lie. It’s a jobless recovery,” Wynn said. “Because recoveries are marked by the level of real employment. And if you count the people who have left the work force, real unemployment is 15 to 20 percent.”

Not only is unemployment much higher than the “official” rate of 5.5 percent, but Wynn said the Consumer Price Index, used to measure inflation, is also rigged in such a way that it doesn’t accurately reflect what real Americans experience on a daily basis. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. had -0.1 percent inflation for the 12 months ended in March 2015. Inflation doesn’t exist.

Wynn says that’s a sham.

“If you take real inflation, and you’ve got to count energy and food and all that stuff, real inflation is much higher than they say it is,” Wynn said. “My employees’ take home pay, in spite of the increases we give them, their paychecks are 90-cent paychecks, 90 cents on the dollar. It’s very difficult for the middle class in America to keep up because of the inflationary pressure and the devaluation of the dollar.”

Wynn gave Ralston a quickie lesson in economics 101 so he could understand the dilemma faced by the average American. It starts with the overwhelming national debt.

“It’s very difficult to explain to a normal working citizen the implications of what $18 trillion in debt means, and what it means when the Federal Reserve buys the U.S. Treasury bonds to finance our loss every month,” Wynn said.

“People think that is some abstract conversation in Washington, uh, for pundits.

“In fact it impacts every one of my employees, critically, every day,” he said. “They notice when they sit down at the kitchen table, that after they pay the necessities, there just isn’t any money left.”

Frank Cannon is the president of American Principles in Action.

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