Democrats Worry Inflation Will Hurt Them at the Polls. Do They Care About the Pain it’s Causing for The Rest of Us?
By AMAC, John Grimaldi
WASHINGTON, DC, Feb 24 – A penny for your vote, says President Biden. To be fair, Mr. Biden and his congressional henchmen are mulling over the idea of suspending the federal gas tax, which would reduce the big bucks you are paying at the pumps by nearly 18-and-a-half pennies, according to a Newsmax report. Asked if it is true, says Newsmax, the president responded: “Every tool is on the table to reduce prices. All options are on the table looking ahead.”
If it weren’t such a critical matter that severely impacts our lives, it would be laughable.
Gas prices are at the highest they’ve been in almost a decade. Across the nation the average cost of a gallon of gas is hovering somewhere between $3.50 and $4.00 these days and in some places, such as California, you might find yourself paying much more than four bucks – somewhere between five and six dollars.
One report at Yahoo! News quotes one energy expert who suggests that we might soon be looking at an a cross the board average price per gallon of $5.00, $6.50 or even $7.00.
Inflation has been soaring at an almost out-of-control pace since Mr. Biden and Democrats took control of our government last year. The rate of inflation has increased to a 40-year high and it currently stands at 7.5%. In other words, consumers are paying about $276 a month more for necessities, adding some $3,312 a year to their cost of living, says the Newsmax Finance website.
The Labor Department estimates that inflated consumer prices left the average worker with a 2.4% pay cut last year. And Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate, notes that “In what was the best year for wage growth that we have seen in many, many years, it still comes up as a loss for many households. Their expenses increased even faster and chewed up all of the benefit of whatever pay raise they had seen.” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has noted that if an average worker did not get a pay raise of at least eight percent last year, he or she, in fact, had a meaningful reduction in wages.
It’s a cycle. The price of gasoline has an exceptionally powerful impact on the cost of foodstuff and other consumer goods. In December, the analysts at Pew Research reported that “Regular gas costs, on average, 58.7% more than it did a year ago this time – $3.491 a gallon last month, versus $2.20 in November 2020.”
To make matters worse, we can look forward to the annual winter-to-summer gas price increase. More people take road trip as we approach summer and that increases demand and cost. During this period energy companies conduct maintenance at their refineries. They also begin to switch from winter-grade to summer-grade blends and that can limit capacity, adding to the cost of driving. Disruptions like this tend to increase costs by as much as 15 cents a gallon.
The Consumer Price Index [CPI] measures the price changes of consumer goods and chief strategist Seema Shah at Principal Global Investors says the U.S. annual CPI is the highest it’s been since 1982. She told Fox News that “what’s worse is that this likely isn’t the peak. Higher-than-expected monthly gains in core CPI indicate continued underlying heat and will do nothing to relieve pressure on the Fed to tighten sharply and urgently.”
Mr. Biden seems to be in denial when it when it comes to the issue of inflation; he blames it on supply chain disruptions and on the covid pandemic. He dismisses the fact that the costly environmental and domestic monetary policies may be at the core of the problem. But watch for more with the socialist spending spree Democrats propose to enact.
