The right is apparently predicting the Biden stagflation. Part of this is pure wishful thinking and opportunism, of course, but part of it is based on an analogy to the late 1970s. Is the analogy accurate?
No. The pandemic shortages and bottlenecks are a blip, not a permanent structural issue. The price of lumber, for example, is already falling. In addition, the world is a very different place than it was in 1979. Globalization, the internet, AI, and weak unions did not hold down prices back then.
So, to our great relief, Biden is not Jimmy Carter, and Trump is not Reagan, although you already knew that. The real inflation issue is whether the combination of the stimulus and higher wages (in part, driven by federal UI) would create higher inflation expectations, which would increase interest rates, which would cause a major market correction, which would result in a recession. So far, there is little evidence of that, but the possibility remains.