How has inflation affected the salaries of US presidents?

A US president earns a fixed $400,000 a year, which is reduced by inflation each year.

It appears that inflation is not only hurting Biden politically, but it is also affecting him personally.

According to the magazine Forbes, an American president earns a fixed $400,000 a year, the value of which decreases every year due to inflation.

Given the recent rise in inflation , the purchasing power of Biden's salary is now 18 percent lower than it was when he took office.

If inflation continues at its current rate, whoever is in office by 2028 will be the worst-paid president in American history, according to Forbes estimates.

To fully understand how this happened, let's start with the late 1700s, when America had no chief executive.

Having recently gained independence from King George III, the founders created a constitution that did not place a president on a permanent throne, but still gave him every privilege.

Alexander Hamilton writes in The Federalist No. 73 that 'the third important ingredient in strengthening the power of the executive authority is its adequate financial support.'

In recent decades, the demand-adjusted value of the president's salary has declined.

Thus, George Washington took office in 1789 with an annual salary of $25,000, which is equivalent to about $600,000 today.

This remained the case for nearly 100 years, a period when deflation was almost as common as inflation, which led to the president being paid considerably more for most of that period.

Except during the War of 1812, when prices skyrocketed due to war costs and the British blockade of American ports, the present value of the salary of the fourth US president, James Madison, was about $365,000, hardly any. Enough for a president who had to deal with the troops who brought down the White House.

Abraham Lincoln faced a similar move. His administration printed U.S. dollars like mad to fund the Civil War, which devalued the dollar and by 1865 the inflation-adjusted value of the honest Abraham Lincoln's $25,000 salary had dropped from $850,000 to $500,000. done

Eight years after the end of the war, former Union General Alisha S. Grant signed into law a congressional pay raise and doubled his salary to $50,000, the equivalent of $1.3 million today.

The move, known as the 'Salary Grab Act', was so unpopular that Congress later repealed his pay raise. However, the president's salary remained the same.

It rose again to $75,000 in 1909, at the inauguration of President William Howard Taft, the highest-paid president in American history.

That year, Taft earned $2.5 million in today's terms. His successor, Woodrow Wilson, was not so lucky as his salary had dropped to about $1.1 million in today's dollars by 1920.

The reason for this was the shock inflation caused by military spending for the First World War.

The Great Depression caused prices to fall across the country, destroying Herbert Hoover's legacy but increasing his salary on an inflation-adjusted basis.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in 1945, his salary was $75,000, about $1.3 million today.

After the end of World War II, the economy boomed and so did inflation, and for the first time in decades, the inflation-adjusted presidential salary fell below $1 million.

Harry Truman fared better, Congress added $25,000, raising the presidential salary to $100,000 a year in 1949 (equivalent to more than $1 million today) and a $50,000 expense allowance. Given in Mad.

Truman, a Missouri farmer, later wrote to the legislature thanking him for the increase and arguing for a similar increase in the executive branch.

He wrote that 'the best laws can be destroyed by bad administration.'

Congress raised the president's salary again to $200,000 in 1969 after Richard Nixon took office.

His vice presidents—Gerald Ford, who took over after Nixon's resignation—and Ford's successor, Jimmy Carter, were the last presidents to earn more than $1 million in today's terms.

Stagflation in the late 1970s greatly reduced the president's real salary, and steady, relatively low inflation has continued to reduce it ever since.

2001, Bill Clinton leaves office burdened with legal debt thanks to an impeachment battle. However, for his successor, the presidential salary doubled to $400,000.

No one has changed presidential pay since then, and with inflation running above the target in recent years, the next president's pay is likely to depreciate, possibly to the lowest level in Clinton's history by 2028. can be less than

If Trump wins this year, it doesn't seem like he's going to increase it -- after all, he has billions, and regularly mentions that he's the first to serve as president. He donated his salary while performing.

Joe Biden is more likely to get some pay raises.