When Will Inflation End? (Script & Sources)

Good morning, terrible news: everything is more expensive - A LOT more expensive - you’re not just imagining it, the United States is undergoing record-breaking inflation, the biggest jump in prices since 1990. Compared to an annual inflation rate of about 2%, this past year we saw a more than 6% increase across all industries - but that 6% is an average, appliances are up about 15%, foods like bacon and steak are up 20 to 24%. Used cars are up 27%, and gasoline is up 50%. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve whose, really, only job is to regulate and prevent inflation, has spent the past year trying to convince us that the higher prices are temporary, and this latest inflation report pretty much confirms that it’s not, and will probably last well into next year, if not longer. 

Now, the cause of most of this inflation is extremely simple to explain - after a year of basically no economic activity, vaccinated Americans are spending again, creating a huge demand - but because of the supply chain crisis and the Great Resignation the supply simply isn’t there. So across the board, there is more money chasing after fewer goods - that’s the simplest macroeconomic explanation, and you’re going to hear that one a lot. But here’s the truth - inflation only accounts for a portion of these price increases. In fact, things should be a LOT cheaper than they are, and that explanation isn’t one of supply and demand, but pandemic-driven greed.

The real reason that you’re hearing so much about inflation isn’t just because of higher prices, but because there’s an aggressive effort to tie the higher inflation to political and economic change that would improve the living and working conditions of the middle and working class, because that’s their only argument against raising wages and passing social support programs. It’s craven, and gross and you should pay attention to how they’re doing it.

Let’s start with the fact that even though the higher prices affect everyone, they actually affect the ultra-wealthy the most. That might sound counterintuitive, but the thing is, inflation basically means that your money is worth less, so if you have a lot of money you’re seeing a greater decline in your purchasing power. And it’s extremely ironic, because part of the price drive is the direct result of workers quitting their jobs over low wages and poor working conditions. Despite the ultra-wealthy increasing their net worths by trillions and trillions of dollars while the working class lost trillions in income, not a single penny of that net worth increase was actually used to balance the real economy, instead it’s being hoarded in stocks, or used for stock buybacks. And as inflation rises, corporations and their owners are completely unwilling to shoulder any of that cost or touch any of their record-breaking profits to offset the increase, so consumers are seeing dramatically higher prices than they should, even during this spending boom. 

What’s worse, is that this partially self-caused and sustained increase is being used as propaganda against the working class to deny them the economic changes they deserve, like an absurdly long overdue minimum wage increase, which by now should be $27 an hour, as well as demonizing the already inadequate efforts to prevent the working class from completely disappearing into abject poverty, like the stimulus checks, extended unemployment, and especially the infrastructure bill.

After almost two years of obscene profits and net worth increases generated entirely by sacrificing tens of thousands of essential workers, and funneling hundreds of billions of dollars directly into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy, the real economy has been completely abandoned in favor of boosting the economic health of about 10% of the population directly at the expense of the other 90% - and the inflation that we’re seeing, although driven by the vaccine boom, is largely the real economy responding to this unprecedented transfer of wealth. The idea that we can’t raise wages or commit to social spending for the working class after doing both of those things full throttle, for the ultra-wealthy isn’t just propaganda or disinformation, it’s craven disregard for people who desperately need help. So yes, inflation is here, and it’s bad - but the only way to fix it is to pay people what they’re worth and lift the millions who have been abandoned into poverty by the one-sided pandemic recovery back into the middle class.