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POLITICS
How to Vote if You're Worried About Groceries, Gas and Rent
It's the opposite of what most people think
President Joe Biden is presently sitting in his secret Price Room, where he has a dazzling wall of knobs, dials and faders. With these, he controls the price of everything: milk, gas, bread, rent and all other consumer goods, right down to socks and underwear.
"Let's increase the price of … oh, let's do peanut butter today!" he says, gleefully turning the peanut butter knob all the way to the right. He cackles with glee.
This is apparently what a lot of Americans believe
Plenty of people who acknowledge that Donald Trump is a convicted felon, a racist and rapist, a traitor to the Constitution and an all-around odious pig nevertheless believe he has some secret power to lower prices. People say they'll hold their nose and vote for him because of inflation and the economy.
It's absolutely true that prices, especially oil prices (which affect the price of absolutely everything) dropped during Trump's term. If you recall, there was a little thing called a Covid-19 pandemic that happened during that time. People who are stuck at home and either unemployed or scared of losing their jobs don't spend a lot of money. Oil actually hit a negative price!
Are gas prices really so high right now? They go up and down. This chart shows the price over time. You'll see the dip during the pandemic, and then you'll see the spike as things opened back up, and then you'll see that they're dropping again. Interestingly, as of right now, prices are lower than they were in 2012. Nobody seems to realize that.
The world had a double whammy with the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A lot of Americans pay no mind to international news, and are unaware that inflation hit everywhere.
It's not, in fact, just a Biden issue. Every leader of every country has had the same issues. No leader actually has a Price Room where they control these things. Biden only wishes he had such a room. He'd have turned down every price, everyone would love him and nobody would have whispered a word about his age.
Do you know who Lina Khan is?
She's the president of the Federal Trade Commission, and she's busy busting up monopolies.
Competition is good for everyone. It's central to how the free enterprise system and capitalism itself is supposed to work, but when we let one or two big players control a market, we don't have competition and prices rise.
Khan is kicking ass and taking names. The big boys don't like this, of course, but so far they haven't been able to stop her.
There's a reason billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have thrown their support and their money toward Trump — they want policies that are friendly toward big business, not consumers. They don't like competition. They like having markets all to themselves, so they can set prices high without fear of a competitor.
If you want prices to go down, you want more competition, not less.
The rent is too damn high
And so are housing prices. There are lots of reasons for the crazy housing market, but one of them is that investors are snapping up homes, making them unavailable for families.
The two presidential candidates have different approaches. Kamala Harris wants to provide $25,000 in down payment assistance. Trump wants to round up immigrants, even though immigrants aren't what's causing the housing shortage. (Trump has never found an issue he can't blame on immigrants.)
Do you know what the zoning and construction permit laws look like in your community? Unless you're in the construction business, you probably don't. But these things are local, not federal, and they have a lot to do with how much new housing is going to be built in your area.
No president can address thousands of local ordinances. We need lots more housing, but you'd be better off talking to your mayor and county board chairperson about this.
Oh, also, keep in mind that the construction business depends heavily on immigrant workers, and that rounding them all up is going to mean that building new housing will become even more expensive than ever.
We all have to eat
You can stop going out. You can switch from steak to beans and rice. But you have to eat something, and now everything in the grocery store is more expensive.
Do you want to know why? Here's a pretty good primer that explains a lot of it. Some of it is supply chains. Some of it is greedflation. But mostly it is complex and multifaceted and not something that any one leader can control, certainly not instantly at the turn of a dial or with one new law.
We do know that agriculture depends heavily on immigrants. Rounding them all up and leaving farmers without workers is not going to lower the price of any food, so good luck finding Americans to milk your cows, pick your apples and butcher your chickens.
He is not the working class friend
I'm a working class woman and I understand that this man with a gold toilet is not our friend. He is, in fact, our enemy. Do not believe his running mate when he sells himself as a hillbilly. He is no more a hillbilly than Bezos or Musk.
Pandering to the working class and to Christians just proves how little respect he has for either group.
I'm scared to death
I'm afraid our nation is going to devolve into a nightmare fascist regime, all because too many Americans think — for no logical reason at all — that Trump can magically lower inflation. He's a former reality TV star who inherited millions and then kept going bankrupt who has somehow sold himself as a gifted businessman. You'd think people would be smarter than this, but here we are.
Our prices will not drop — they might actually spike, especially if he manages to do what he says he will with tariffs, which he in no way understands. But our freedom will plummet.
I'm expecting higher housing, gas and grocery prices with a side order of fascism — and if it happens, it will be because we did it to ourselves.
About Michelle Teheux
I'm a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe! I also write a Substack called Untrickled, about income inequality, and have a new book, Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class.
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