If I were in charge of this mess? I'd inflate the shit out of everything. It makes foreign goods more expensive, thus bringing American jobs back. It rewards savers because all of a sudden interest rates make you money. It likely pushes healthcare past the breaking point, so you basically push your pandemic medicaid plans forward and open it up to anyone. Wage pressures give you all the cover you could want to raise minimum wage and you can tie childcare, healthcare and other living incentives to inflation, which makes them centralized, which robs Republican governors of their power. And I'd do all this because I know that the Democratic house races aren't really going to have to deal with inflation because they're not seen as having any power, and the four year runway I'm looking at means by the time I face any referendum on it, housing prices have been controlled by interest rates and wages are gonna be up. Housing is deeply artificial at the moment. I think it's gonna crash like a ton of bricks, based simply on the fundamentals that are currently awash in PUA money. But we'll see.
I actually agree with you I’d probably do the same thing. Inflation cleans up balance sheets and It’s the only way to get effective out from this crazy debt load. As a Democrat you want inflation it’s good for labor, and it gets you out of pension pit that you can’t pay. 5% is probably not quite enough you probably need 7% and interest rates to match. The current dislocation is terrible though the longer it lasts the more rich folks get assets at 1% that will inflate up at 7% making Crazy profit.
If by "wages" you mean "buying power" then yeah - it's a real problem. But there are a couple chunks on the soccer ball below that Canadians have a different relationship with: "Healthcare, personal insurance and pensions" are 20%. The Biden administration is already front-loading childcare tax credits into payments. That costs them nothing, but makes it look like the government is giving them money. They decide to do the same with insurance (which will raise inflation more) and suddenly yeah, prices are going up but the democrats are giving them money.* "Money" or "Covid." Which do you choose? There will definitely be outliers but the Dems have a rhetorical advantage here.