Consumer price index spiked 6.2% raising fears over out of control inflation.

 

A help wanted sign. New York Post/AFP.

The consumer price index spiked 6.2% in October compared to this time last year. New York Post. It was up 5.4% in September and is the biggest increase in the measure since 1990. It is the fifth month in a row that inflation has been over 5%. Prices increased across the board with energy, shelter, food and new and used cars causing much of the issue. Medical care and furniture also saw increases while air fair and alcohol actually decreased in value. Some of the inflation is due to the growth of travel industries that were hurt by the Coronavirus. The inflation is wiping out wage growth with real wages falling at .5%

My Comment:

This story broke yesterday but I thought it was important to cover. In short everything is getting expensive as hell and I largely blame it on the policies of the Biden administration. It's not entirely the fault of policy makers but a lot of it is. 

I do think that some of this inflation is natural. There is an effect from the Coronavirus lingering. People are traveling again and spending money on vacations, which is causing some growth in those industries. That was probably inevitable and not much can be done. Indeed, if it wasn't for the rest of the inflation, it would probably be a good thing. 

The car shortage is causing a part of the inflation as well. Most of that is due to the lack of new cars due to the problems they are having in China making computer chips. That means a lot of factories don't have the parts they need to build new cars, which means prices for both used and new cars are increasing in prices. Indeed, I checked the value of my cars and my SUV is worth more than I paid for it two years ago and the 11 year old sedan I have more than doubled it's value compared to a couple years ago when I was considering trading it in. Most of this is organic but I do think Biden has compounded the supply issues due to his ineptitude at handling logistics. 

The majority of this inflation is due to Biden's incompetence and terrible policy. The most obvious is the fact that the Biden administration is printing money like it is going out of style. He and the Democrats are spending trillions of dollars and is paying for it by just printing money. That is an obvious and dangerous source of inflation and it's going to get worse with the effects of the stupid and unnecessary infrastructure bill. 

Giving tons of people a lot of money for nothing in the name of coronavirus recovery has cause a lot of this as well. All those people got paid in printed money and then they spent a lot of it instead of saving it. They didn't really pay their bills, they just generated more of them and it hasn't helped things. 

But I think more than anything else it is Biden's stupid, unconstitutional and evil vaccine mandate that is going to cause the most problems. Firing 20% of the workforce is going to destroy the economy in so many ways but raising prices is the most prominent. And even if people take the testing options, the government isn't paying for it so the costs will be passed onto the consumer. 

It will also make our logistic nightmare even worse, further raising the costs of transportation. Truckers and other transportation employees are probably even more vax resistance than the general population. Firing them will cause dramatic problems and may make the inflation problem irrelevant. 

So how do we lower prices? Simple, stop doing everything Biden wants. Higher tariffs on products would result in other countries devaluing their currency, lowering prices. Drilling for oil and building new pipelines will lower gas prices. And stopping printing money would do a lot to slow this inflation.

None of this will happen under Biden though. He and the Democrats appear to be totally unable to change course and that means that things won't change until 2022 at the earliest, assuming the Republicans take the house and senate. The real question is if the country will last that long...