I’m surprised that anyone is having that much difficulty with inflation since most anyone with any intelligence has managed to either negotiate a raise to offset inflation, or has moved to a new higher-paying job. But if you’re one of those who’s struggling financially due to inflation, here’s where the blame lies . . .

When Covid hit in early 2020, Trump did nothing. Like Nero, he fiddled while America got burned by Covid. By the time anything was done, it was too late, and the route his adminstration took was to shut down businesses, which was the worst thing they could have ever done, second only to throwing billions of government money at it, another big reason why inflation occurred.

People used Covid, the resulting shutdowns & fear as an excuse to stop working. As the labor force contracted heavily, the manual labor needed to produce goods dried up, so companies had problems getting their goods to the marketplace, and the supply chain disruption helped to cause inflation. To get help, the companies started offering more & more money to get people to come to work, which also drove prices up. Over 4 years in, we’re still seeing shortages of grocery items due to lack of labor.

Here’s your flow chart of how we got here & who’s to blame:
> Covid hit in early 2020.
> Trump’s lack of response failed to stop or control it.
> Trump instituted shutdowns which encouraged people to stop working & going out.
> Prices rose as a result of lack of labor & scarcity of goods/services.
> Prices rose further due to the influx of gov’t money through Trump’s SBA programs.

Trumps name is all over the inflation we’re experiencing today. If your main concern right now in your choice for president is the economy & inflation, why vote for Trump when he caused it in the first place?

There are only a few ways to contain inflation, and one of them isn’t throwing more money into the economy to battle high prices as you only feed the inflationary monster, not slay it. Increasing wages & easy gov’t loans only added fuel to the fire. We can’t become a communist country & order companies to stop raising prices, but that would be a decent solution as most of the rise in prices is due to corporate greed pushing the envelope by increasing prices well beyond the rate of inflation. Some building products & food products have increased by double what they were before Covid; we’re talking about a 100% increase in prices when inflation has only increased prices overall since 2019 by just 15% over and above the nominal 1.5% increase we normally see annually.

Jimmy Carter’s adminstration saw interest rates as high as 18% in 1980 to try and stop inflation & it caused a recession that lasted over a decade that was only tempered by a rising stock & bond market. Today’s Fed did a much better job in raising the Federal Funds rates just enough to choke off inflation and is now in the process of easing, but it may take until the end of 2025 or into 2026 to see mortgage rates come back to the 5% to 6% range that historically has been a good range for sustainable economic growth without stifling or overstimulating it.