White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain received criticism after he appeared to endorse a tweet that claimed that inflation and supply chain issues are âhigh class problems.â
On Wednesday, Jason Furman, who served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Barack Obama, tweeted, âMost of the economic problems weâre facing (inflation, supply chains, etc.) are high class problems.â
âWe wouldnât have had them if the unemployment rate was still 10 percent. We would instead have had a much worse problem,â he added.
Klain re-tweeted Furmanâs comments and added, âThis.â
Social media users quickly responded to that assertion:
The tweet comes after a new report found that inflation is at its highest rate in 13 years.
Brian Crosby of Traub Capital Partners, told Fox Business, âConsumer prices continue to rise, particularly as demand driven by people returning to post-vaccination life outstrips supply that is increasingly constrained by logistics and labor shortages.â
âWe see it every day,â he added.
At the same time, bottlenecks in the supply chain continue to cause delays in products getting to storesâ shelves. A White House official told Reuters earlier this week the bottlenecks will likely mean âthere will be things that people canât getâ for the holidays.
However, the official added, âAt the same time, a lot of these goods are hopefully substitutable by other things. ⌠I donât think thereâs any real reason to be panicked, but we all feel the frustration, and thereâs a certain need for patience to help get through a relatively short period of time.â
The Biden administration is working with industry leaders to try to address the bottlenecks in the supply chain.
And on Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration warned Americans could pay as much as 54% more for their energy bills this winter âbecause of these higher energy prices and because we assume a slightly colder winter than last year in much of the United States.â
