Inflation Rate
Recently, Bloomberg published a study of how inflation impacts consumer. While prices aren’t rising as fast as they were in 2022, they are still rising faster than anytime in the past 10-15 years. This is a direct result of policies of the Biden Administration, congressional spending abuse, and poor policy of Biden’s Federal Reserve. Consumers, middle America, and working people/families bear the brunt. While Biden brags that inflation has fallen to only 3.2%, most everyone realizes that prices overall have jumped 20-30% across most areas the average person or family spends money. In just a few years !!! And they continue to rise each and every month.
Groceries up 25%.
How about 6 million new people let into the country? The government pays directly or indirectly for food for this group of illegal aliens. You have a budget to stick to. The government does not. So the price level isn’t necessarily as relevant to the government as it is to you. You can’t just create more income out of thin air. But the government can print, or borrow, unlimited money.
Electricity up 25%.
The misguided policy that moving vehicles, stoves, power plants to wind and solar is only one element causing a rise in electricity. The government has forced hundreds of stable, inexpensive power plants to close. While other countries have built thousands of new coal plants, the US is closing reliable energy sources. The power plant closures make 0.0001% or less impact on the bogeyman of global warming. In addition, the government heavily subsidizes wind farms, solar farms, electric vehicles for high income earners. As a recent wind power executive noted, windmills wouldn’t exist without the massive government payments. And states subsidizing these also pass along the higher cost both in monthly bills and in lack of reliable and adequate power. The Biden administration also decided to revoke and deny so many permits for natural gas and oil exploration, transportation, and provision that these are at the lowest level in decades.
So, natural gas prices soared nearly 30%.
The US isn’t alone in bone-head policies. Germany tried even more stringent policies (to which Biden wants to move). These failed miserably with electricity prices shooting up more than 20 fold at one point. Which would put your electric bill for your house at over $1000 per month in the US. Germany failed and then moved to permit emergency energy sources including new coal plants. They found wind and solar was unsustainable, extremely costly, and totally unreliable. When the sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t blow at night, it can get mighty cold in your house in Germany’s climate. Statistics show 20-50 times as many people die each year from cold temperatures that hot temperatures.
Rent up 20%.
Higher energy prices, foolishly low interest rates, FOMO, and antagonistic government agencies (CFPB for one) rushed homeowners and investors into houses with unsustainably cheap interest/mortgage rates. Additionally, the amount of money per house that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could lend to support higher home prices jumped to more than $1 million in many areas of the country. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were chartered to provide liquidity and standardization for generally affordable housing. Where’s your $1 million dollar house with a cheap mortgage rate? Those investors with cheap money, including Wall Street firms and other big money managers, bought hundreds of thousands of houses. Unavailable for homeowners, the supply shrank and more home buyers had to compete against each other as well as large companies with cash, cash and more cash. Large apartment owners subscribed to two information gathering companies which, according to recent lawsuits, conspired to monopolize rental rates and push them higher.
Not included here is a massive increase in home insurance prices.
If you have to insure a home that is now priced at $500,000 instead of $300,000, the insurance premium will increase between 50% and 80%. Many people are seeing insurance prices jump this amount. But in states like California, government rules and committees prevent insurers from pricing the insurance to make up for the increased risk. So the largest insurers are leaving the state. The largest insurance companies may have had the most competitive rates. Those companies leaving force homeowners and apartment owners to move to other insurers which already had higher premium rates.
Car Insurance up 33%, Used Cars up 35%.
This statistics ignores new car prices. These are also up significantly. Part of this stems from a short period of time of a shortage in required computer chips to manage your emissions and increase gas mileage. However, the government mandates and incentives in electric vehicles caused a massive drop in US car manufacturers making gasoline powered cars instead of electric vehicles, SUVs and trucks. Statistics show the large US manufacturers such as GM losing $35,000 per electric vehicle sold, even with large subsidies to the buyers. Higher new vehicle prices, fewer gasoline powered cars, and other government mandates then trickle down to used car prices. And massive increases in new and used cars directly increases car insurance costs.
Restaurant Food up 24%.
A confluence of factors have impacted restaurant food prices. One, Covid policies and Covid cash significantly affected restaurant workers. Many were paid more to not work than they earned while working. California alone is estimated to have made $35-70 Billion of fraudulent or overpaid unemployment claims!! (By the way, if you were the person responsible in the state of California for overseeing the massive fraud, Biden rewarded you with a promotion to a position in the federal government-because then one can spend more or ignore fraud on a larger scale??). These policies also prompted many to look to change careers. Many states passed higher minimum wage laws. In California, the minimum wage is now $20/hour. Given the policies of many of these states pushing up housing prices, taxes, rent, and costs of living for the residents means that a higher wage is much of a necessity. That is not only to support a person living there, but to pay the even more taxes necessary to the government to support the government bureaucrats and spending.
These are just samples of the inflation rate you’ve seen with your own eyes and wallet. Are you going to vote for more of these policies and inflation? The answer is that a lot of people will.