The Real Cost of Inflation
Corporate media and government statistics claim inflation is now running between 4 and 7% per year, and has cooled down. But read the fine print, and you will see this is so-called “core inflation” leab=ving out supposedly “volatile” prices for gas and food, which are of course necessities for most people in this capitalist economy. And inflation there is much higher, as a trip to grocery or the gas station will tell you. This hits poor people particularly hard. Prices at the Dollar Tree and 99 Cents stores, where many people shop for bargains they can’t get at supermarkets, have gone up to $1.25 or $1.29 for the same products. That is of course a 25-29% increase. Since wages have not kept up, these price increases are simply another mechanism for a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. And the Fed’s solution to this problem is to raise the price of money (interest) in hopes this will diminish economic activity and hiring, forcing people out of work, reducing demand and prices. Capitalism has no solutions.
