At final presidential debate Biden offers stunning misunderstanding of how economy actually works

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden spent three days locked in his house this week, avoiding media scrutiny, in intense preparation... for that? It’s the question that begs to be answered after Thursday night’s final presidential debate in Nashville.

You would think that with all that preparation, Biden would have had the facts at his fingertips (and I don’t mean in his notes). But, again and again, Joe got basic facts wrong as he faced off against President Trump on the debate stage at Belmont University.

He continually insisted that the president “doesn’t have a plan” on the coronavirus pandemic, even as he listed things that the Trump administration had already done months ago to address the virus -- and without the benefit of hindsight.

Clearly, there was only one person on the debate stage who had ever created a job and signed the front of a paycheck and it wasn’t Joe Biden.

As has been the case for months, Biden was unable to come up with anything he would do or have done that the Trump administration isn’t already doing.

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It got worse.

Biden — the man who helped open the American market to cheap Chinese goods and, as a member of the Senate, was a leader in the effort to get China into the World Trade Organization— accused the president of ratcheting up our trade deficit with China.

That is not just wrong, it’s the opposite of the truth.

Trump’s trade policy reversed the deficits created by policies Biden supported both in the Senate and the White House. Even the Washington Post and The New York Times couldn’t let this slide. As the Post bluntly stated: “Biden is wrong.”

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Then there was the economy. Biden spouted a slew of fundamental inaccuracies on Thursday night demonstrating a stunning misunderstanding of how the economy actually works, culminating in a pledge to destroy the American oil industry.

Clearly, there was only one person on the debate stage who had ever created a job and signed the front of a paycheck and it wasn’t Joe Biden.

Asked about the minimum wage, the president correctly stated that it should be a state issue because, for example, $15 per hour is a far greater burden on small business owners in Alabama than in New York City. Perhaps Biden was thinking of those small business owners following the enactment of a $15 minimum wage when he referred to the “poor boys” (he meant the Proud Boys).

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Surprisingly even for Biden, he actually implied that raising the minimum wage to $15 would help small businesses struggling because of the coronavirus. Asked if now was “the right time” to raise the minimum wage to $15, Biden stated that he supports a $15 minimum wage because “one of the things we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to bail them out too. We should be bailing them out now, those small businesses."

Only a politician who has never had to pay employees or keep a business afloat could say something that absurd.

As the president wondered, “we have to help small businesses by raising the minimum wage? That's not helping.”

Of course, it isn’t. If businesses already need a bailout, it is nonsense to put them further in a hole by increasing their labor costs.

Perhaps Biden’s worst absurdities were those in support of the environmentalist fantasies of his Green New Deal-lite.

He first claimed that he never called for a ban on fracking — a lie -- and one he stuck to with the tenacity of a politician who has spent the last 47 years in Washington.

Even if he had never said he would eliminate fracking (which he did), he obviously couldn’t satisfy his commitment to get to zero carbon emissions by 2035 without eliminating it.

Seriously, how stupid does Biden think we are?

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Finally, the former vice president demonstrated an astounding level of economic ignorance stating that he would commit to phasing out the entire American oil and gas industry as part of his plan to get to zero carbon emissions. Seriously, he would eliminate the oil and gas industry. As the president stated, “that's a big statement.”

Indeed it is.

This would destroy millions of jobs and degrade the foundations of our entire industrial society.

The champagne glasses in Beijing and Moscow were surely clinking at that statement. Let’s hope they’re not clinking after November 3rd.

I’m unsure what Biden spent the whole week studying down there in his basement. His debate performance certainly gave us no clues.

One thing is for sure, it wasn’t an Economics 101 textbook.

Andy Puzder was chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants for more than 16 years, following a career as an attorney. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy. He was nominated by President Trump to serve as U.S. labor secretary. In 2018, Puzder authored "The Capitalist Comeback: The Trump Boom and the Left's Plot to Stop It" (Center Street).  His latest piece, a Broadside by Encounter Books titled, “It’s Time to Let America Work Again” was released on July 20, 2020.

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