In the midst of the campaign for re-election to a second term in November, US President Joe Biden is constantly using the psychological influence card by declaring that the US economy is in good shape thanks to his performance in the White House.
“The economy is in a terrible state. Inflation has affected everyone,” waitress Jeanine Minervini told AFP during a demonstration in front of the Golden Nugget Casino in this city in the western United States.
Its union, which represents 60,000 hotel employees, reached a last-minute agreement on Saturday with some casinos to obtain salary increases. For months, the union has been renegotiating each luxury hotel's collective agreements on pain of a strike.
Despite this progress, what Las Vegas bartenders, waiters and chefs have in common reflects a generalized dissatisfaction across the United States.
The high bill in stores or the high price of filling the car's tank with gas has angered Americans.
This is despite favorable economic indicators.
After an unprecedented explosion in forty years in 2022, inflation has slowed significantly in recent months to approach the 2 percent target, which does not mean that prices have declined.
The United States is recording acceptable growth.
The president is accustomed to promoting his economic policies, and on Friday, while the hotel sector demonstrated in Las Vegas, he stressed in a statement that he had secured 14.8 million jobs since he took office.
He added, “The American economy is the strongest in the world.”
This rhetoric completely contradicts the prevailing feeling among Americans, especially in Nevada, the state in which Las Vegas is located and which relies on the volatile conditions of casinos and records the worst unemployment rates in years.
“Everything has become so expensive…the cost of living, rent, car insurance, everything! Even food,” Andrew Wentland says.
To secure a decent living, this casino employee had to find a second job.
The man in his fifties, who now works 16 hours a day, says: “I tried to make a lot of adjustments. It is difficult to live like the poor.”
He is upset that the government is spending his tax money to fund aid to Ukraine or Israel, two countries at war that the United
States supports.
He added, “We have nothing to do with these wars. They cared about us before caring for them.”
This discontent is the main danger facing the president on the streets of Las Vegas, because Nevada is one of the few key states that will decide the country's future in November.
In 2020, Joe Biden narrowly defeated Donald Trump, obtaining an additional 33,000 votes.
#Joe #Biden39s #bet #economy #election #risky
