Last night I mused about the possibility that the election was really about inflation the whole time and the result has been baked into the cake all along. But that hardly seems possible. Overall inflation has been low for over a year. Food inflation is close to zero. Gasoline prices have been dropping.
But there's more to it. Here are three examples of big, recent, high-profile price surges that have far outstripped wage increases. First up is auto insurance:
Obviously this is not the fault of either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. But it's still big; it's painful; and it hits nearly everyone every six months in an unexpected and shocking bill. Here are credit card payments:
This is a combination of rising credit card balances and higher interest rates. That's mostly the Fed's fault, but who cares? It affects more than half the families in America and it's a big hit. Finally, here are auto loans:
Again, this is the result of normal inflation for new cars plus rising interest rates. The average monthly payment on a new car has gone up more than $200, and even if most people haven't bought a new car lately, it's the kind of thing they hear about from friends and neighbors who have.
I don't know how big a deal this is, but it doesn't all get captured in standard inflation statistics. Rising credit card payments don't get captured at all, for example. The end result is that rising prices and interest rates can be broadly more painful than it might seem they should be.
Kevin, you are giving Americans too much credit.
All of the post-election navel-gazing is wrong, because it's all about policy. You and I care about policy, but regular Americans don't have any idea what's going. They don't know what inflation is, or what is causing it. They only know what they're told, so what matters is who they listen to. Unfortunately, the traditional sources of information have lost the trust of a large body of the American people.
In my view, the big takeaway for this election, and for 2016, is that charisma matters. Everything Trump says is nonsense, starting with "Obama was born in Kenya," including "windmills cause cancer," up to "inflation is Biden's fault." But it doesn't matter, because he says it with sincerity. He spent years pretending to be a businessman on TV, and that skills pays off at his rallies and his interviews, where he has perfected a note of improvisation that rubes mistakes for sincerity. Any other politician speaks in rehearsed clichés, which Americans have been accustomed to, and which they associate with dishonesty, even when they're telling the truth. It helps, and does not hurt, that Trump says crazy shit that keeps people entertained. I don't believe that politics *should* be based on that kind of thrill, but apparently it is.
This is all the more visible in our Youtube age. Trump's interview on Joe Rogan was key: not a single truth was spoken, but he created the impression of someone real, competent, and unrehearsed. People respond to that. They believe him no matter how much we point out he's a fool.
Bernie's appeal came from a similar place. Clinton might have had some of that spark. Dems need someone with that charm. We need someone people will listen to and believe. Someone who can hold their attention, even by saying crazy shit, if need be. We have lots of showbiz folks, it shouldn't be that hard. I think Jon Stewart is electable.
If there were thumbs up here I would give you one.
Of course people I know are generally informed and logical thinkers, but when I hear some person on the street comment about voting or politics on NYC NPR or elsewhere it always seems like they are running comments from only the most uninformed unthinking people possible people (but are probably representative of what they got).
People aren't mad that inflation is going up, they're mad that prices are not going back to where they were 2 years ago! Every time they buy milk or eggs or a big mac they are pissed b/c they remember when it was much cheaper and think it should go back down. Irrational, but I think that's the aggravation.
Of course, as the economists have been saying, this is idiotic - not just because deflation is both very rare and usually terrible, but because the increases have been more than offset by wage growth.
The only circumstance when this *wouldn't* be idiocy would be if the people doing the loudest whining actually were outliers who, because of the accident of their industry, income level, or location, hadn't seen significant wage growth despite average wages generally rising.
Careful about assumptions on wages vs. inflation. Inflation means prices are up for EVERYBODY. But not everybody has gotten pay raises. Not a single person in my immediate family (n = 5) has seen more than a 2% pay increase TOTAL over the last 4 years. And Trump won those votes 4-1.
They are all doing worse than average then, because average wages are up above inflation particularly for middle to lower wage levels. I don't have the stats but I assume that government employee pay at all levels of government are up to inflation levels and all union worker pay (such as unionization is these days in the US) too.
Are your family members all at above six figure pay levels?
Nope. Not a single one of us makes six digits. I make the most at $68,000. Thing about averages is that, by definition, half of the people have done worse than that.
I work at a university, and everyone there (approx 1,500 employees) received a single 2% cost of living increase during the last 4 years, except for the President who got a 300% raise.
So, you brought out a point: everyone got minimal raise except for the 1 person at the top - the President at 300%. Why isn't anger directed at that disparity, which is at the local level, rather than at the administration? I was a volunteer for the Harris campaign, and I heard those complaints about high prices, low wages, etc while phone banking. But, when I bring out that Target executives awarded themselves record bonuses while complaining about supply chain increases - eg greedflation - the voters would just hang up on me. Why is it that individuals won't look deeper than some angry rumblings on podcast?
We don't get to vote for the leaders of Target. However, we do get to vote on leaders who keep gaslighting us with "no, you actually got a bunch of pay raises and are way better off than 4 years ago."
Government wage growth has been much slower than inflation and all of the rest of society.
"Not a single person in my immediate family (n = 5) has seen more than a 2% pay increase TOTAL over the last 4 years. " And yet average working class wage (40th percentile and lower) growth has more than exceed inflation. With the bottom 10% having the fastest wage growth. Presumably your family in the top half of wages which really haven't seen much wage growth.
I'm the highest earner in my family at $68,000. Is that the top half of wages? I doubt it. My brother made $37,000 last year.
Saying that "average" working class growth has exceeded inflation means by definition growth has not exceeded inflation for half of the working class.
Insurance is up because return on investment is down and for once, crashes are not going down.
Is that inflation, though?
I have family in the insurance business. For things like home insurance, the big increases are due to weather events - more frequent flooding, fire, hurricanes etc, which is due to climate change. Whether climate change is man made or natural, it is happening, and needs to be dealt with. Otherwise we will continue to have the increases, and in some places, companies won't insure because of the instabilities in the area.
Return on investment is through the roof. One of the biggest causes of auto insurance increases is the massive increase in the cost auto write-offs due to natural disaster. That is through the roof. And the supply chain problems caused a massive increase in the cost of repairs, the threshold for writing off cars (used car prices exploded), and to a lessor extent the cost of new cars.
The three most popular "cars" in the USA in 2024 were all trucks. They are more expensive to buy and costly to insure. The fourth most popular was the Tesla Model Y. It isn't inflation if Americans are choosing to buy way more transportation than they need.
something tells me lecturing people about what cars they should like won't go over well.
Cars have existed for a century and yet somehow, working stiffs have gotten through almost all of that time without constantly screaming "AUUGHHH PORSCHE IS SO EXPENSIVE WHY CANT AH AFFORD ONE?!!! DONT WANT STUPID STATION WAGON!!"
So why in 2024 do they now appear to feel entitled to something they apparently can't actually afford?
Unfortunately, that's probably true. And it seems like people these days really have a hard time understanding the consequences of their own decisions.
That other guy drives a $100k coal-rolling bro dozer, so by God I should be able to have that too! Wait a second, you're telling me that my loan payments are gonna be $1500 a month with $400 a month for insurance and another$400 for diesel?! Damn you, Joe Biden!
It's a free country, so drive whatever you want. Just don't bitch when you see the price tag, or someone will likely try to explain how you got yourself into that mess. And of course you'll take that as the damn libs trying to tell you what you can drive. Really, it's your paycheck telling you that and the damn libs are just trying to translate the message since it isn't sinking in.
That's what I think might be really driving some of this - people, especially people in the heartland, are so hopped up on Fox News cultural norm bullshit that bigger and more unnecessary trucks have become a status symbol for them. Detroit and Japan just keep making more and more because they can't stop buying them, but their buying is now somewhat uncoupled from their income because it's more than just a mode of transportation - it's their way of signaling that they are high-status.
Veblen was right.
It's not lecturing; it's an observation. One big reason that so many oversized trucks and SUVS are on the market it because of how the market for vehicles is regulated. "Regulations, tariffs, and other government-imposed hurdles reward American car companies for building bigger, more expensive trucks and keep out any potential competitors." -- Reason Magazine, https://reason.com/2024/02/02/why-are-pickup-trucks-ridiculously-huge-blame-government/
So I don't necessarily blame consumers. They are responding to unhealthy incentives and a lot of very compelling advertising. It's not a healthy trend for the US government to promote the sales of vehicles that are heavier and larger than we need to drive. A healthy market for vehicles would not increase the unecessary use of fossil fuels and promote larger, heavier and more wasteful transportation. Government regulations could promote that kind of market, and American car buyers would respond to the incentives provided.
". "Regulations, tariffs, and other government-imposed hurdles reward American car companies for building bigger, more expensive trucks and keep out any potential competitors." -- Reason Magazine" Why would you cite a source that is 100% lies? Actual government regulations and government imposed hurdles favor small cars and punish SUVs. But thank you for documenting you are a complete imbecile
Lecturing people about lecturing people (especially when that's not what they're doing) won't go over well either.
Why stop now?
Lefty Hair Shirtism & Bougreousie Bohemians Left professional class lecturing the heathen and disreptuable labourers has been winning over so many so far, carry on!
I didn't hear any lecturing, just facts.
+1
Everybody's doing just fine though, amirite?
That's literally never true in a capitalist system. There are always *some* people getting the shitty end of the stick. Why is that now suddenly a problem?
There's no way to accurately know how everyone is doing, so we use aggregate metrics for insight. On the whole, people are doing fine - better than fine even. That can be true even if some people are not. We can't make *federal* policy decisions based on how specific people feel they're doing.
Someone is always down bad, but that's life. In a healthy economy, you just want to make sure it isn't always the same individuals getting screwed over, and the ones that are down now have a chance to get back up. Everyone potentially gets their time in the barrel. Maybe my turn is next.
None of that means that the economy is actually bad when all the normal indicators say that it's surprisingly good. There's a term for people that think that way: idiots.
I've been buying grapefruit for breakfast for more than half a century. I swear I can remember not too long ago they were less than a dollar. Now they're $2 or more. I'm reminded of the difference every time I buy them, which is multiple times a week. While I'm not worrying about money and I understand what has caused the price rise, I can easily see how someone on a budget would have it at the top of mind.
I paid $1.99 a pound for boneless skinless chicken breasts in big and small places I lived in the late 1990s. It's on sale for $1.99 or $2.49 all the time today.
Particular products are subject to their own market forces, particularly if there is no direct substitute, like the prices of eggs which vary seasonally even when there isn't a laying chickens pandemic (inflexible demand, changing supply). Maybe there's a citrus virus or something going on.
There's currently huge upheaval going on in the US citrus industry. Florida's production is a mess because of climate change (more hurricanes = wrecked trees in Central Florida) and the insect-carried bacterial citrus greening disease. The land on which citrus groves sit has also been in high demand as more and more people move to Florida, and many growers have sold their land to developers.
This has caused huge declines in US production of oranges and especially, grapefruit, which in the past was mostly grown in Florida. No longer - it's mostly from California and Texas now. But those states mostly haven't boosted total production of various citrus fruits to compensate for the loss of Florida citrus, so instead we are importing quite a bit of fruit these days from Mexico and other countries. Since 2014 we have been net importers of citrus.
https://www.fb.org/market-intel/u-s-citrus-production-an-uphill-battle-to-survive
Re auto insurance:
"Obviously this is not the fault of either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris."
How is it that the price of [insert good or service] going up is Biden's fault, but auto insurance isn't?
Since auto insurance increases are being driven by global warming, Biden's relative lack of action on this problem is the cause cause. (Of course, it will be much worse under Trump.)
The rate is stable at close to zero leaving the prices as they were ...
The market will find its price point and that is done by strangling the turnips that have the pence in their pockets.
This isn't rocket science, right? There was profit to be made and it was.
isn't the rise in auto insurance fishy? I mean, there is no reason claims should be way up.
Unless the cars under water are denting profits.
They most definitely are.
Do you know how few people carry insurance anymore? It is nuts. Arizona does not tow your car, they just cite you. Atlanta, Georgia still tows a car for no insurance.
The cost to fix cars is much higher than it used to be. All the additional airbags and electronics are expensive to replace.
Ha, someone scraped the front corner of my lowly Subaru a few months ago and it cost $4000 to fix it (or was it $5000?). No electronics involved. The headlights, turn signals and fog lights were even fine.
From what I've read it has to do with the increasing amount of complex technology on cars, which drives up their purchase price and the possible replacement price.
State Farm doubled my brother's auto insurance a few months ago for absolutely no reason and we found another insurer. He doesn't even have a car with a ton of technology onboard.
New car prices (for similar cars) are up some, but not that much. It's the increasing number of cars completely destroyed in natural disasters that are driving the costs in the worst states. i.e. florida.
When it comes to voters, policy details do not matter. Economic proposals do not matter. Foreign policy proposals do not matter. Immigration proposals do not matter. Emotion is the only thing that voters care about. Make them feel hopeful, make them feel angry, that's all that matters apparently.
If policy mattered then you would not have these swings back and forth voting out the incumbent party because of inflation or price increases. Voters do not soberly research economic data to understand whether a specific issue is caused by the incumbent administration or if the challenger's policies will address that issue effectively. They say "Biden is President now! Eggs are expensive now! He must be the cause so I will vote for the guy that says Biden made eggs expensive!" There's no logic or rationality there. You can't reason with a person who thinks like that.
What all these things have in common is that none of them have a damn thing to do with the executive branch of the US federal government - much less POTUS.
The sad truth is that most of the voting public has no idea what a POTUS even does. I'd like to blame education, and it's definitely part of the problem, but most of the problem is that your average voter is unfathomably stupid. I mean that sincerely. It's truly hard to conceive the depth of their idiocy. I've talked to plenty of them and it's jaw dropping up-is-down shit that you have to hear to believe. And, now that they've found a political party that truly values ignorance and belligerence, they feel seen and empowered. There are dark days ahead.
Like the apocryphal quote attributed to Churchill goes: the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Democracy always depended on, if not a highly educated citizenry, then at least one that accepted some basic features of objective reality. They can't even do that anymore. And so passes the republic that Ben Franklin once hoped we might keep.
I agree on the "most of the voting public has no idea what a POTUS even does". When I was doing phone banks for Harris, I had a number of voters who didn't understand that POTUS cannot unilaterally change laws or enact legislation ("why didn't they...").
Kevin - If you think your charts somehow justify voting for a racist, misogynist, incompetent authoritarian who promises to tear down our democracy, I disagree.
FFS, people. As someone else remarked, every time someone went to the grocery store they were reminded how badly prices had jumped. It's all well and good to finger wag them that inflation *this year* isn't bad, but that's really unhelpful when they're paying 50% more for the same groceries.
It's like yelling at someone for still being sad about a death in the family the previous year by saying that no one died *this year.* It's tone deaf and stupid.
Plainly the answer is Tarriffs!
The problem is they forgot that they also got a 20%+ wage increase that was bigger than the rate of inflation and inflation has slowed. So they are actually better off than they were.
So yes we can finger wag at them because they apparently know literally nothing about the economy or their own finances.
I don't doubt that SOMEONE got a 20% wage increase. Literally no one in my family did, and no one at my large workplace (1,500 employees) did. The workers at my workplace all got one single raise in 2022 of 2.1%. The rest of my family saw no wage increase.
I guess somehow everyone else got a whole lot more.
" don't doubt that SOMEONE got a 20% wage increase." The vast majority of people in the bottom 40% of income did. " and no one at my large workplace (1,500 employees) did" You either work for the government or are lying.
I work for a public university.
Equally tone deaf to tell them that their hard earned pay raise is actually all been sucked away by inflation. "You didn't actually get a raise, because your money is worth less now."
No one is paying 50% more for groceries unless they are buying different things or are on an all-eggs diet.
Price of soda pop is up almost 100%. Don't fuck with people's Coca-Cola!
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0200FN1102
Butter is up 50% since 2022.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FS1101
White sugar is up 50% since 2020.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000715211
White rice up 50% since 2020.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000701312
Coffee up around 60% since 2020.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000715211
Why are you cherry-picking items when we have a food price index ON THE VERY SAME SITE.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SAF11
This shows a 20% increase in food prices. Rice and Coffee are higher because of climate change related issues. Which of course Trump will make worse.
Soda pop is only up 50% since Biden came into power. It was up 33% in Trump's final 2.5 years in office. So Trump did worse.
"Hey, it's only up 20%!" is not the winning argument you think it is.
Based on the chart, the headline could easily read the other way. Look, when the economy is negative under a Dem, Fox would amplify it and the rest of the media will tag along, and when is fine they will continue. Now if a Rep is president, they will hide the negative. At the end of the day, it comes down to Fox News and it’s pernicious influence, on any topic. Murdock cannot leave the planet soon enough. To be sure people have agency and when I hear some idiot say Dobbs occurred under Biden, well, what can you do.
Homeowner's Insurance is another annual expense that has jumped noticeably.
it'll keep jumping the more wildfires, hurricanes, and sea level rise we have. If only one of the major parties were trying to do something about that . . .
If it's "all about inflation after all" I invite you to look at Bloomberg's page on US Rates & Bonds:
"US Bond Yields Surge as Trump Win Stokes Inflation Expectations"
There's the smart money, and there's the dumb money, and then there's the voters.
I'm betting the average voter hasn't the foggiest idea what a bond market is, or what bond yields are, and certainly not if they are surging or why.
Trump spent his first three years in office continuously trying to browbeat the Fed into printing more money. He somehow forgot all about that, as did the media, when the chickens came home to roost.
I would say the base of the problem is that she started in July, and people voted for familiarity.
If she'd have started six months earlier it would have worked.
She was ahead in July. Look at the crosstabs of exit polls--people broke more and more strongly for Trump depending on how close to the election they made their decision. It's hard to say that another six months would have made a difference; harder still to say it would have helped.
Just saw that a lot of people didn't even know Joe Biden had withdrawn until last night,
https://www.latintimes.com/did-joe-biden-drop-out-google-trends-presidential-election-trump-harris-564875
and for a lot of those idiots they'd only have heard about this after they cast their ballots.
No, it would have been worse. She's a really bad campaigner and has horrible judgement. the last can be seen by the fact that prior to running for the senate, she was on the right wing of the democrat party But she switched to the extreme left because she insanely thought that was the best path to the presidency. And was out of the campaign long before the Iowa caucuses because of that stupidity.
I think the public both left and right have a gut feeling (a correct one I might add) that the system is stack against regular people, that the country is run for and by wealthy interests who aim to bleed the rest of us bone dry by various tricks.
How you think it's happening drives who you support politically. MAGA supporters think the problems lie with giving folks equal rights and welcoming in the "strangers" - that means having to give up your piece of the pie to others, including immigrants. The modern conservative movement has done a Rawandian job a rage harvesting they even pulled off the trick of being white supremacists while welcoming Latino men into the "white tribe". This was accomplished via control of various media channels so all these folks have been herded into information silos. In their world we've always been at war with East Anglia.
The rest of us on the life raft of those clinging to the pipe dream of a multicultural society are waking up to the sad sorry truth that the truth cannot be communicated to the siloed folks. The entire Biden administration was about fixing the economy wrecked by Trump and the Pandemic, in particular an attempt at a restoration of economically depressed rural areas. We're aghast at the notion being proffered by some that if we were a bit more racists and sexist, shoved some folks into the closet, we'd have won back the siloed folks.
I don't know how we climb out of this - I think it has to get really, really awful for the current power structure to shift. I don't think the status quo changes via policy tweaks, it's going to be something really, really bad, worse than COVID.
Well -as the critics my dear Drum of your Inflation Poo-Pooing (and overly simplistic and oft misapplied graphing) have been saying for quite some time (of which myself) - that A. Populations everywhere (not just USA and not just because of Fox News or other excuses) HATE HATE HATE inflation. To a certain level of even irrational unnumeracy at times
B. In fact if one goes beyond somewhat simplistic headline numbers and looks at different consumptoin baskets, it has been more than evident
As in fact actual proper economists - including my old friends in Fed - do....
The Democrats made a fairly significant - although understandable and at some level quite defensible - policy mistake with the Biden rounds of stimulus and above all made a political mistake as it is without question that populations rather tolerate unemployment much better than inflation. A mild early recession in Biden admin likely would have been better politics.
Inflation poo-pooing, Bourgeousie-Splaining to the unwashed was autistic and bad politics. Instead of denialism, grappling head on and not going into denialism might have saved you.
Of course the general response will be to demonise the "MAGA" as drooling idiots or ignoramuses or racist meanies.
That is because people are selfish. Inflation is borne by all, but unemployment is on the marginal, typical low wage worker.
I would gladly take a pay cut from higher inflation if millions more people had good employment. But I realize I am in the minority.
You do know that two of the three stimulus rounds were under Trump, right?
And inflation was worldwide.
"proper economists - including my old friends in Fed" This is an example of an oxymoron. The Fed generally only hires complete economic ignoramuses as economists.. People no one other than the IMF would ever consider hiring. "The Democrats made a fairly significant - although understandable and at some level quite defensible - policy mistake with the Biden rounds of stimulus " Milton friedman would tell you that Biden's policy could have no impact on inflation. it is exclusively controlled by the FED which was run solely by Trump appointees when inflation got out of control. And yes, the fed should have spent the fall of 2021 not engaging in QE while stating unequivocally interest rates would need to rise in the spring. There is never a justification for QE when interest rates will need to rise. to control inflation.
I had heard a story this that the Reagan Administration in 1983, in order to make their inflation numbers look good for the '84 election, had the BLS take out interest payments and such from the inflation stats which it remains to this day. Without that data factored in, the inflation rate looks awfully different.
On cars - they are much more expensive to fix due to electronics. Repair people are also price gouging
Same for insurance of all types. Vehicles more expensive? Higher premiums.
Is your house more expensive to repair/replace? Of course it is - but we don't WANT to hear any of that because we would be admitting that the problem is us (meaning ordinary people trying to get rich). We would also be tacitly admitting (with house repairs) that perhaps storms are getting worse and we can't have that !!!
As far as credits costs are concerned. This is pure gouging IMHO. THIS is why the national debt is becoming so important - left unchecked we will be paying huge amounts on our debt. Years ago credit card interest rates were 5% at my credit union. (Its the second largest one in the country). I now have a VISA card thru them at 11% with all rate increases approved by our board of directors. Even using credit minimally is costing so much more.
It gets worse when you look at store credit cards. I got a Lowes Home improvement card that charges 29% (it can be higher). But they offer a 5% discount on pricing for CC holders. As they say "La Dee frickin da". Needless to say I don't use it.
No one these days is encouraged to SAVE. Everything is based upon SPENDING. The last car I bought 7 years ago I bought new and paid cash for it. They almost refused the sale because I paid cash.
We need encouragement to break out of this vicious cycle we seem to be in. Instead of saying we gotta spend what about we gotta save? Spending is getting very expensive due to credit use. When will they entice saving with higher rates on CDs and bank accounts?
"When will they entice saving with higher rates on CDs and bank accounts?" Wow, you're assuming (and possbily also admitting) that people are imbeciles. You save by investing in the stock market. If you need to minimize risk, invest in dividend paying stocks whose rates crush interest.
People don't vote on what inflation is.They vote on what they think it is. Just last week I interacted with someone who took a grocery receipt from 2020 and one from today and calculated 136% inflation. No amount of explaining is going to penetrate that. What might, though I doubt it, is ruinous increases in grocery prices after Trump puts everyone who harvests vegetables in a concentration camp. Same for housing prices when everyone who builds them ends up the same place.
I'm in a deep depression right now. I've been fighting this shit since Richard fucking Nixon and it has only gotten worse. Now, over half the country are racists and they aren't going to recognize climate change until it is too late, if then. Then perspective that school shooting are just a fact of life has won. I have never seen so many people so eager to shit on their own children. Benjamin Franklin said that we had a Republic "if you can keep it." We just democratically voted democracy out of existence.
I'm tired. I can't live the rest of my life in a dictatorship. I have a year and a half until retirement and then I can decide to leave if it gets as bad as I think it is going to get.
" Now, over half the country are racists" Racism is way down. In the time of Nixon, it was 80-90 of whites were racist. Now the top end estimate would only be 50%.
I don't know how big a deal this is, but it doesn't all get captured in standard inflation statistics.
And it disproportionately affects working class voters—the kind who apparently were in Trump's margin of victory. A 300K per year PMC couple can find another grand or two in their budget a lot more easily than working class folks can; or, the economizations they might need to engage in are less painful. Two instead of three annual vacations. Eat out once a week instead of twice week. Cut fast fashion spending a bit. Delay that new car by six months. And so on. The budget-tightening by people making 20 or 30 bucks an hours is a lot more painful.
Also, do monthly rent since 2019!
And again, even those products that are no longer rising rapidly are priced at nominal levels considerably higher in many cases than they were in 2019. It sucks that more voters don't have a better understanding of economics, and foolishly focus on the nominal price level. Oh well.