The Loudest Opponents of “Inflation” Are Some of Its Biggest Aiders and Abettors
Prescription drugs, hospital visits, housing, higher education, and more have all become frighteningly more expensive, far outpacing Americans’ wages. But those kinds of price increases are ignored by the politicians who are now stridently decrying inflation.
When adjusted for today’s dollars, average home values soared by 118 percent between 1965 and 2021, while incomes only went up 15 percent. (Marcus Lenk / Unsplash)
Inflation talk is everywhere these days, viewed by the professional right as the linchpin of a political comeback in 2022. Right-wing politicians have used Thanksgiving to highlight the bite of cost rises. Tucker Carlson is on Fox News every day using the rise in gas prices and other goods to posture as a champion of the working man. And Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has attacked Joe Biden for neglecting the “record-setting costs for everyday goods” Americans are facing, urging him to cut spending and leave in place Donald Trump’s massive tax cuts for the rich and corporations.
Biden and the Democrats, meanwhile, until recently have either ignored the issue entirely or issued boilerplate remarks of regret and sympathy.
It’s hard to find a better example of how the narrow, tedious partisan “debate” of Washington serves mostly to cloud the real causes of the country’s ills, as well as their perpetrators. Because inflation is a very real problem for ordinary Americans — and it was long before Republicans started freaking out about Biden’s presidency. But the worst of it has nothing to do with turkey legs and milk.
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