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[0] Crushing inflation rates are costing American families thousands, yet consumer spending, even on luxury goods, remains sky high.
[1] People weren't taking trips, people weren't going on vacation, they weren't going out to eat, but they were still buying things.
[2] We talked to an expert about the state of the economy, what's causing these contradictory trends and what to expect going forward.
[3] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor -in -chief John Bickley.
[4] It's April 16th, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire.
[5] The pandemic lockdowns had a devastating effect on young children.
[6] Now, for the first time, medical experts recommend kids as young as eight be screened for anxiety.
[7] We'll discuss the new guidance.
[8] These children, even though they're young, they have been through a lot of changes during the pandemic, having to be in and out of school, not being able to interact with their peers, not being able to see their families.
[9] And despite dramatic declines in church attendance in the U .S., a new poll found that Americans still highly value Easter and Passover.
[10] I think the lessons they offer are important for the country's future.
[11] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[12] Stay tuned.
[13] We have the news you need to know.
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[20] While spending on luxury goods in America has risen at a record pace, so has inflation, driving up costs on not just high -priced items, but everything from groceries to gas.
[21] Here to discuss is Brandon Arnold, Executive Vice President at the National Taxpayers' Union.
[22] Brandon, thanks for coming on.
[23] Oh, my pleasure.
[24] Thanks for having me. So by this point, just about everyone has started to feel the pinch of inflation.
[25] Do we have any hard numbers on how much this is costing the average family each month?
[26] Yeah, so Bloomberg just ran these numbers very recently.
[27] And they say in the year ahead, Americans are going to pay the equivalent of a $5 ,200 tax, $5 ,200 next year, because of high inflation.
[28] and that equates to about $430 a month.
[29] That's a staggering number.
[30] I just don't know where people are going to come up with it.
[31] And now, something that was a little confusing for me is that during the pandemic, we had people staying home and theoretically being less productive.
[32] I would have thought that less production would mean fewer dollars to spend.
[33] So how did we end up with inflation when there are fewer people working?
[34] Yeah, that's a great question.
[35] One of the main reasons was the government involvement.
[36] So we put a lot of money.
[37] You know, we mentioned the $2 trillion at the onset of last year, but there were an additional $4 trillion that were pumped into the economy over the course of the past couple of years.
[38] Just an enormous amount of money went into the economy.
[39] And to some extent, that was necessary when people were forced to stay at home.
[40] They had no way to make money.
[41] When small businesses were forced to shut down, they had no way to make money.
[42] So the government sent them checks.
[43] They sent them checks in all sorts of different forms.
[44] We had stimulus payments.
[45] We had the PPP loans.
[46] We had an expanded child tax credit that was advanceable to put cash in people's pockets.
[47] So people had a lot more money than they otherwise would have because of government intervention.
[48] And then we had the surprising ability for a lot of workers, not everybody, but a lot of workers to continue throughout the pandemic and do quite well.
[49] So we had a very unusual economic experience that produced a continued level of consumer activity.
[50] So activity was high.
[51] that means demand was high.
[52] Supply fell.
[53] Supply fell because of logistical problems across the globe.
[54] High levels of consumer activity, high levels of demand, low levels of supply, and that is a recipe for inflation.
[55] Now, what exactly is a recession?
[56] How do we define that?
[57] And are we heading into one?
[58] I think we have a long way to go before we hit a recession.
[59] And recessions are, you know, negative economic growth.
[60] The economy is growing.
[61] You know, of course, the problem is that people aren't experiencing that growth to the extent that they normally would because even as wages increase, when you have 8 .5 % inflation, those 6 % increase in your salary actually means that you're losing money or your purchasing power is eroding.
[62] I think we have a long way to go before a recession.
[63] Before a recession takes place, I think we'd see a substantial decline in the employment numbers, which have been mostly positive.
[64] Now, is there anything that the federal government can do at this point to help the economy?
[65] What would they need to do to get this inflation under control?
[66] Yeah, it's tough.
[67] I mean, because there are so many factors.
[68] Some of them are within the federal government's control.
[69] I think, you know, at a minimum, we should do things.
[70] Biden can wipe out tariffs, particularly on allied countries.
[71] There's no reason why we should be dealing with high tariffs for steel and aluminum for countries that are reliable allies and solid trading partners.
[72] Those only drive up construction costs and make things like housing and all.
[73] automobiles more expensive.
[74] I think there's things like encouraging energy production.
[75] If they want to produce more green energy, that's great, but we need an all of the above strategy.
[76] That means opening up federal lands for drilling.
[77] It means having more hospitable processes for getting those permits out and actually getting drills in the ground.
[78] All right.
[79] Well, Brandon, thank you so much for coming on.
[80] My pleasure.
[81] Thanks so much for having me. That was Brandon Arnold, executive vice president at the National Taxpayer Union.
[82] Coming up, medical experts recommend anxiety screenings for eight -year -olds.
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[86] Recent data proves what many people have suspected.
[87] Rates of anxiety and depression in children and teens rose during the pandemic.
[88] This is prompted first -time guidance calling for anxiety screening in children as young as eight years old.
[89] Here to tell us more about what might be causing this and why health experts are concerned is DailyWire's Charlotte Pence -Bond.
[90] So Charlotte, what exactly did this new report say?
[91] Sure, so there's new guidance suggesting that all kids eight years and up get screened.
[92] for anxiety.
[93] It comes from the U .S. Preventive Services Task Force, which is a group of volunteer experts from various health fields.
[94] Now, this is the same group that makes recommendations for things like cancer and diabetes screenings.
[95] The group initially released a similar recommendation for older kids in 2016, but they've now expanded on that previous guidance.
[96] What's really striking here is they're recommending screening starting as young as eight years old.
[97] We spoke with pediatric psychiatrist Dr. Mattali Wataker from Dignity Health, Northridge Hospital in California about this trend.
[98] Anxiety in children as young as eight years old can manifest in very different ways.
[99] The common symptoms are things like, you know, feeling anxious, nervous, having difficulty, sleeping at night, poor appetite, refusal to attend school, refusal to participate in social activities.
[100] But it can also manifest with physical symptoms, including headaches, stomach aches, feeling excessively tired, nausea, vomiting, etc. So these recommendations are applying to children as young as eight years old.
[101] Where is the guidance on anxiety screening coming from?
[102] Well, they put out a draft evidence review on it, and it's open right now to public comments.
[103] And there are already some critics.
[104] Task Force member Martha Kubick, a professor of nursing at George Mason University, said, certainly we all share the same concern about wanting to minimize this risk for young people and to intervene effectively so that we can prevent these consequences.
[105] But she warned that screening children who are not obviously troubled could lead to stigma and needless anxiety.
[106] Now, how much of this increase is driven by a true increase in anxiety among kids versus more aggressive screening for anxiety?
[107] Well, there are open debates about the overdiagnosis of childhood disorders, specifically ADHD.
[108] But there seems to be solid evidence that kids really are more anxious in recent years.
[109] Multiple studies discussing social media use are especially compelling.
[110] Dr. Waterger says she's definitely seeing an increase in anxiety.
[111] Children these days are, there's a lot of demand on them socially, academically, and now with the added stress of the pandemic over the two past two years, it has been incredibly difficult for these children to, you know, as far as how to socialize, why they cannot interact with their friends, why are they having to isolate?
[112] It's having a huge impact on their anxiety levels and on their relationships.
[113] That being said, this was a factor before COVID came to the U .S. Well, the decision to have children undergo mental health screenings obviously shouldn't be taken lightly, and clearly there are many complex factors at play here.
[114] Absolutely.
[115] That was DailyWire's Charlotte Pence -Bond.
[116] A new poll found that Americans still say the lessons of Easter and Passover are important to the future of the next.
[117] nation.
[118] The findings come despite a dramatic decline in church attendance in recent years, especially since the pandemic.
[119] Here to tell us more about the specifics of this survey is Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham.
[120] So Megan, I know polling is frequently done on religious affiliation and church attendance, but this one was kind of interesting in that it asked about the significance of particular holy days.
[121] What did it find?
[122] Yeah, you know, I thought that was interesting, too.
[123] And I will say really welcome, because typically those surveys on religion, as you said, Georgia, don't seem to dig very deeply into American's spiritual attitudes.
[124] And this one did.
[125] So the poll was commissioned by the Convention of States Action, which is a conservative nonprofit committed to limiting the federal government's power.
[126] And it was conducted by the Trafalgar Group, a polling company that has a pretty impressive track record of accurately predicting election results.
[127] So anyway, this poll of more than a thousand likely voters found that the vast majority of Americans feel that the spiritual values imparted by Easter and Passover are important to ensuring a strong nation for future generations.
[128] More than two -thirds, 72 percent of respondents agreed with that statement.
[129] Interesting.
[130] Now, were there any differences along partisan lines?
[131] There were, but you know, those differences weren't maybe quite as.
[132] big as you might think.
[133] So 86 % of Republicans said that the moral lessons of those two holidays, which you might say are the grounding of the nation's Judeo -Christian character, are important, and that's probably to be expected.
[134] But so did the majority of Democrats at 57%.
[135] Independence, predictably, came right in between those two groups at 76%.
[136] But maybe the most interesting breakdown of the polling to me was how many respondents felt that the lessons felt that the lessons of Easter and Passover aren't just important to the nation's future, but very important.
[137] More than half of voters said that, which kind of flies in the face of a bit of that perception that the U .S. is now very secular.
[138] Even if fewer people are going to church regularly, they still seem to believe that religious principles have a lot of value in forming the nation's character.
[139] Well, I know from some of your past reporting that church attendance statistics can also be pretty difficult to pin down.
[140] They can.
[141] And that's typically because polling companies track church membership more than attendance, which isn't really the same thing, particularly when you look at evangelicals, the largest religious group in the U .S. So there, especially among those younger demographics, you can find a lot of church attendance without necessarily finding formal membership.
[142] Now, if you go only by membership, that's dropped about 20 points from 70 % to about 50 % since the turn of the century.
[143] Yet only about 20 % of Americans say they have no religious affiliation at all.
[144] So you would have to say that we are still very much a faith -focused country by the standards of other Western nations, which do tend to be much more secular.
[145] Here's pastor and dean of Southern Seminary, Herschel York, offering another possible explanation for those church membership statistics.
[146] Another interpretation is that people are simply being more honest about the truth.
[147] It could be in the past that more people claimed to be a member of a church or a synagogue or a parish when, in fact, they really didn't go and didn't live it because it was sort of culturally expected that you be a part of a church.
[148] So I do think that has changed.
[149] But the flip side is that I think those that do go are probably more committed than ever before.
[150] So I think churches are deeper, though perhaps not as broad as they used to be.
[151] People who are intentional and go to church, go to church because they really do believe what's being taught and preached there, or else there's no reason for it.
[152] So maybe we're all just self -reporting a little more honestly about whether we go to church now.
[153] Right.
[154] And on that note, to listeners who are celebrating this weekend, happy Easter and happy Passover.
[155] Yes, absolutely.
[156] Thank you, Megan.
[157] That's Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham.
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