80% of people are poorer, then when Biden took office, but not a lot poorer, but measurably. If they financed a car or home, the interest rate is nearly twice as high as it was for the decade before Biden took office. So, the money left over for other things is far less.

When government spends too much money it drives up inflation and borrowing costs, so my comment is not specifically about Biden, but to point out the middle class pays for government spending not only with taxes, but with less purchasing power and higher borrowing costs.

Voters need to understand that when they vote for someone that promises to tax the rich to give people money to people to buy houses, that they are voting to lower their purchasing power.

If they vote for someone that promises to forgive student debt, they are going to pay for that student debt through higher taxes, higher inflation, and higher borrowing costs.

All government spending and taxes get socialized in consumer prices and the middle-class experiences that cost as a drop in their standard of living.

Does that mean government should not help the poor? No, it simply means that the more robust the social safety net is, the more government services our government provides, the more spending the government undertakes because people say those magic words... "The government should... ", the less people who work hard to earn a living get to keep and to spend that money on themselves. That is how "socialism" works.

That is the "dark side" of socialism. Remember the motto is "to each according to their needs" where some bureaucrat decides what your needs are.

Then there are regulations. Regulations cost every American more than $10,000 per person per year. Does that mean we should have no regulations? Of course not. It means we need to be careful; regulations are not free. We need regulations to keep us safe. But imagine if government went through all the regulations on the books and invested the effort to keep us just as safe as we are now for say $5000 per person. Each couple would have $10,000 on average more to spend (or more likely the things they buy would collectively cost $10,000 less).

I live in California, one of the most socialist states in the country and our middle class is shrinking faster than an ice cube on a hot day. Many are saying enough and are moving to a state with a better value proposition and others are getting poorer in place.

I turned around broken companies for a living by reengineering them. The goal was to figure out how to satisfy customers at the lowest cost by giving them the product or service they wanted and good customers service along with it and minimizing the overhead at the company.

Companies like government often end up adding a lot of overhead that customers don't really care about and only competition causes them to examine how they are spending money. Now imagine how much "overhead" the government has, with citizens having a choice regarding what to "spend on government", how is government going to get its costs under control?

This response is not "anti-government". Government has a job to do. But as citizens we need to view government like any other product or service we buy and depend on. As "customers" of the government we need to demand it gets better and operate at lower cost, so our middle class can get their lives back.