The Right-Wing and mainstream media have been hyperventilating about inflation. Fareed Zakaria puts it into perspective. And it is not bad at all.
Fareed Zakaria gets the numbers right on inflation but …
Fareed Zakaria did the numbers and had the proper numerical narrative. But there was something missing.
“In recent decades, inflation had stayed unusually low from 1960 to 1980; for example, prices rose 166%,” Fareed Zacharia said. “In the next two decades, they rose 117%. But from 2000 to January 2021, prices rose just 55%, including all of last year from 2000 through December 2021, prices rose 65.5%. That is a huge uptick in one year, and it is throwing household budgets out of whack. But taken as a whole, we are still in an era of low inflation. Now one reason prices probably stayed low for so long is because wages stayed low. … Workers didn’t start to make real gains until the late 20 tens, and now inflation is eating into those gains. But they have made gains, and perhaps as inflation subsides, those gains will grow again. Cheap goods helped keep inflation down in the last two decades.”
He had much more to say. But I think many commentators in our media, even good ones like Zakaria, fail because they rely on our economy’s old guard’s framing. It generally absolves the corporation and our economic system for the ills that affect us all.
Recently Facebook claimed a meme at our Coffee Party USA site was partly false after AFP reviewed it.
The meme said: Umm, can we stop calling it inflation and call it what it really is? Price gouging and corporate greed.
AFP FACT CHECK: Facebook posts claim that the rising cost of goods in the United States is due to price gouging rather than inflation. But the experts rejected the idea that corporations are the main culprit and said the spike in prices follows big federal spending, heightened demand, and supply problems, all of which accompanied the pandemic.
First of all, the fact check is wrong. It’s corporations that raise prices, and thus nominally; they are the ones who cause inflation. But that is neither here nor there because they must raise prices if their costs go up. The question is why did their prices go up. Is it the private sector or the government?
When our Coffee Party USA group brought it to my attention, I had a message that I wanted to make clear. Most importantly, I hope everyone keeps in their minds and on the tip of their tongue.
The fact-checkers are completely wrong, and it is clear it is corporate biased. You cannot have natural inflation unless there are shortages. Except for cars and select products, there are no shortages.
Agriculture price increases are a choice by monopolies because they have pricing power. Even the supply chain issues are corporate greed issues. The private sector chose Just-In-Time-Inventory (JITI), which means even a short supply-chain disruption can cause shortages. As well, corporate greed created chip shortages. They decided to chase cheap labor overseas. The supply-chain disruption caused by the pandemic and JITI is the failure of the private sector, not the government.
Math always offers an answer. You cannot have record profits even before the realization of inflation and then claim you had to raise prices to maintain profits. Inflation is an excuse used to transfer the wealth of the many to the few.
If one does not call out the false inflation claims, including the fact-checkers carrying the load for the plutocracy, our decline to the indentured servitude of 80% of Americans will continue. It is incredible how the powers of the plutocracy will coalesce. And too often, we allow ourselves to be complicit because we are comfortable (by “we,” I mean those doing generally well who have a platform. The poor and lower-middle-class are working too damn hard to survive).
Come on, America. Let’s stop acquiescing to the fraud that is our economic system.