Yesterday I returned again to the theme of bad economics that Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden share, lamenting on their economic nationalism (which is really pure special interest politics at the expense of the rest of us). But don’t think I’m drawing an equivalence between the two: Mr. Biden is a deliberate obfuscator of the truth, whereas I think Mr. Trump is a true believer in things like tariffs. In the parlance of Judge McAfee (speaking of Fani Willis), there is an “odor of mendacity” with much of what Mr. Biden says, especially in his economic comments. His approval is at record lows, and most people think he has made almost everything worse–the economy, conflict abroad, disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan, support for Israel, and so much more. And like most of us, Mr. Biden doesn’t want to look in the mirror and see what he has done to cause so much angst. And like most of us, he wants to blame someone else for the problem.

His latest attempt to deflect on his performance? That would be to complain against greedy landlords driving up rent prices. Privately Mr. Biden continues to rail and fume that he gets no credit for the great economy he’s created, after all Inflation is down! But this just shows not only his ignorance of economics but also his total disconnect from the real lives of the American people. While CPI inflation has come down, that is a rate of change of price level increases. We still have prices going higher, just a bit slower than previously. As I’ve related before, instead of being hit upside the head with a 2X4 day after day, Mr. Biden’s policies are doing it just once per week, and we’re supposed to be happy about that. And the disconnect occurs because he is totally insulated from inflation. He doesn’t shop, and none of his family is feeling the brunt of inflation–after all, the family “business” has made millions upon millions of dollars. Do they really feel the pain at the pump? But back to rent increases.

“My administration is cracking down on big corporations who break antitrust laws by price fixing to keep the rents up,” Biden said in Las Vegas. “Landlords should be competing to give folks the best deal not conspiring to charge them more.”

Biden’s attack on what he calls “rent gouging” is part of his broader election-year effort to shift the blame for stubbornly high costs of living away from the president and his economic policies, and onto corporations with outsize pricing powers.

“Folks are tired of being played for suckers and I’m tired of letting them be played for suckers,” Biden said.

There are lots of complicated reasons that the supply of housing has not kept up with demand, but as usual, supply and demand explain everything. The burden of proof is on Mr. Biden to explain to us why this is not an issue of excess demand, and is simply too much greed. The standard answer to “greed” causing higher prices at any time is equally applicable now. Why the sudden explosion of greed? Do we think landlords were not greedy before his election, but now they are? Did his election somehow cause an explosion of greed? I think Mr. Biden is not as hard on landlords as I am–I think they are always greedy. If there are two bidders for an apartment that a landlord has, I think that the landlord will almost always give the apartment to whoever will pay the most. I think that if any landlord has apartment vacancies, and some other landlord is gouging with higher prices than he or she is charging, I think that the landlord with vacancies will try very hard to communicate the good deal they have to people who want apartments. And I think consumers are pretty savvy about finding the best deal they can–they’re not waiting for Uncle Joe to come in and deliver them. In other words, I think markets work (at least when they’re allowed). And clearly rising prices are the tool to fix excess demand. And those same higher prices are the incentive for new housing construction to take place. The cure for high prices is high prices, as economists like to say. But when housing is just one of the many areas of our life that has ever increasing prices, this suggests that this is not just a housing problem, but an inflation problem, with excess demand throughout the economy.

Mr. Biden, if your mirror is foggy, I’ll be happy to let you rent mine. But that rental price will be 25% higher than I would have rented to Mr. Trump. Inflation you know. If only we could have a president that would do something about that!