r/Economics • u/jediporcupine • 6h ago
News As inflation rises, more than 40 percent say they struggle to pay for basic necessities: Pew
https://thehill.com/business/6149011-americans-struggle-basic-costs/101
u/Micksar 6h ago
“THERE IS NO AFFORDABILITY CRISIS! STOP SAYING THAT THERE IS AN AFFORDABILITY CRISIS! WE ARE ALL DOING AMAZINGLY WELL! THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A MORE AFFORDABLE ADMINISTRATION IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION!”
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u/KryssCom 5h ago
You joke, but this is literally the opinion of a few people in this subreddit who feel like we peasants should take their word VERY SERIOUSLY when it comes to assessments of the economy 😆
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u/naijaboiler 3h ago
i have just stopped buying beef. not steak. beef. i saw the prices, i was like um "chicken" tastes good now
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u/BillionDollarBalls 3h ago
I prefer poultry and fish more than red meat. Plus lower calories. However I do like beef/steak once in awhile and when i saw the prices a bit ago I was like what in the actual fuck
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u/plassteel01 3h ago
Short term pain for Trump's long-term gain. Remember Trump is trying to become a multi- billionaire you can give up on food and housing for that!
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u/seventysevensevens 3h ago
I love when people counter with "but incomes have never been higher" well, they're still too low obviously.
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u/floridorito 5h ago
I happened to catch a clip of him on the news today, and he says, "Every day a reporter asks me about affordability. And I always say, 'That is what Biden caused.'" Accidentally correct there.
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u/Bastillerion 4h ago
Democrats have really screwed the pooch here
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u/Randomdumpling 5h ago
If no one can afford anything and prices are still up, I’ve no clue what needs to give. Companies will probably just reduce supply as has happened with automobiles or even with airline routes so some people will just stay priced out. Firms are working on margins rather than revenues.
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u/Defiant_Wolf5934 4h ago
This is what I see happening. Car companies are going to reduce new car sales and allocations to dealers (which is going to further hinder the used car market). Cars are going to get even pricier as scarcity picks up. Same goes for all other durable goods such as furniture, appliances, etc.
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u/alilhillbilly 4h ago
Step one in curing Trumpflation is to stop trumping.
Trumping is a type of self-harm where an otherwise healthy country starts making incredibly stupid economic maneuvers every single day that are clearly designed to create maximum inflation and may even be done at the behest of enemy nations.
Often trumping involves embracing economic ideas that have for decades been seen by a broad set of economists across the political spectrum as dangerous and stupid and pretending that they are genius new ideas.
If we just stop trumping the economy could be fixed but until we decide to stop trumping ourselves we're in for more Trumpflation.
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u/082426grateful 5h ago
I’ve cut back saving into the 401k from 13% to 6%, and I’m 51. I need desperately to be saving now. It’s just that, in my effort to stick to a budget, all the stuff in my budget moved up in cost, and income did not.
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u/lacontrabandida 5h ago
Bot
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u/082426grateful 4h ago
Not.
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u/Big-Soup74 4h ago
1 month old account eh
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u/082426grateful 3h ago
My comments hit a little close to home? Must have. We usually get a lot of online “mOnTh oLd aCcOunT” comments when the comments disagree with your beliefs…
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u/fatbob42 6h ago
I don’t know why they always write these stories when inflation goes up. What’s the rate when inflation is down? Struggling to pay for things is also a function of income vs expenses, not necessarily prices or inflation.
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u/Qeltar_ 3h ago
Struggling to pay for things is also a function of income vs expenses, not necessarily prices or inflation.
So.. expenses are not largely a function of prices and prices a function of inflation?
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u/fatbob42 3h ago
Not largely, no. They’re at least as much a function of what you decide to buy or need to buy.
I mean, what’s the likelihood that you were in the black and then the extra 2% of inflation this year took you into the red, especially if your wages went up by roughly the same amount, as they probably did.
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u/Qeltar_ 3h ago
Some staggering percentage of households say they are paycheck to paycheck. It doesn't take much to tip a lot of folks over, especially with how dramatically fuel costs have risen.
This winter is going to be really ugly.
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u/fatbob42 3h ago
That’s what I’m saying - they were already paycheck to paycheck and so it doesn’t really help if inflation was 2% instead of 4% this year. Inflation is a problem but not for this reason.
People should be asking why they’re living this way in the first place and voting on that basis.
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u/twenty_three_three 2h ago
The implication here is that necessities are not something one decides to buy or not buy, they are necessary for survival. From the article:
44 percent of U.S. adults reported struggling to pay for basic necessities like medical care, rent or mortgage, transportation and food
Of course one can say, they need to eat less avocado, bunk up with 7 people in a 2-bedroom house, eat beans and rice and maybe a multivitamin every now and then.
But that's a little crazy right? You should be more upfront with what you are saying. The struggle is people complaining about experiencing downward mobility.
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u/303uru 5h ago
Wages are never going to keep up with inflation in realtime, so it makes perfect sense.
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u/fatbob42 5h ago
Isn’t that the wage/inflation spiral? That workers know what the expected inflation is and build into their wage expectations?
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u/303uru 5h ago
Right, but that takes time. Inflation hits today, wage increases don't happen until people change jobs or hit the review period in their fiscal year. So there will always be a lag.
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u/fatbob42 5h ago
I don’t think this is right. The spiral doesn’t happen without workers projecting into the future. And even discarding this concept of the spiral, obviously people look into the future.
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