The outrageous prices at the grocery store and gas stations – the highest ever recorded and increasing at rates too fast to calculate with precision – are yet more collateral damage from the initial lockdowns two years ago. The story unfolds over two years but the line of causality is direct.
Apparently it’s going to get much worse. I wonder if at some point, no one will remember how this all began. Maybe everyone has already forgotten.
I asked a friend: do you think people understand the relationship between the March 2020 lockdowns and the wild price increases two years later? The answer came: no way.
That surprises me but I also understand. There has been so much flimflam coming from the media and government spokespeople for so long, so many many attempts to demonize and scapegoat.
In addition, for many people, the past 24 months have seemed like one big blur when everything they thought about the world has been blasted to pieces. It’s extremely disorienting. After a while, one can get used to the chaos and just accept it without attempting to account for it. The lines of causality too become blurry.
The latest mess – and this doesn’t even account for the shocking talk of nuclear war that is now in the air – profoundly affects all states in the US, not just the blue ones that stayed closed much longer than red ones. Red states have felt normal but now they too must deal with incredible price increases in everything plus strange and random goods shortages on the shelves.
No one is spared when we all use the same currency and inhabit the same global economic environment.
Cash and Mattresses
The cash you hold is losing value. Financial markets are volatile, but even when rising, portfolios can’t keep up. Even the best-managed funds are scrambling for returns. Savings seem ever less like savings. Even with cost-of-living increases in salaries and wages, the purchasing power is shrinking day-by-day.
The promises of “transitory” inflation turned out to be as credible as the promises to control the virus.
Persistently high inflation becomes a tragedy for the poor and working classes, who are daily astonished at the new terrain of high prices for everything that makes life good. But it is especially awful for the savers. They are all being punished for frugality and exercising good personal stewardship over their resources.
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