Supply chain shortages: Are we buying too much stuff?
Most explanations of the “supply chain crisis” that has emptied store shelves across the U.S. portray the problem as “really complicated,” said Lee Schafer in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. But the root cause is simple: too much demand. Yes, the global supply chain has become overwhelmed partly because of an intricate interplay of Covidrelated manufacturing shutdowns abroad, labor shortages at ports and in trucking, shippingcontainer traffic flow, and a dozen other factors. But the primary driver of extended delays in delivery is that Americans have been “buying stuff” in huge, historic quantities. The pandemic started this phenomenal buying spree, said Terry Nguyen in Vox.com. When Americans found themselves locked down in March 2020, they used the money they could no longer spend in restaurants, hair salons, or hotels to go online and use the simple touch of a button to order exercise equipment, lawn furniture, computers, appliances, TVs, gaming consoles, books, shoes, and myriad other distractions. Stimulus checks only fueled this national addiction, to the point that U.S. retail sales are 5 percent higher than they were last year, and a whopping 17 percent higher than in December 2019. Experts say supply chains will remain snarled into 2023, unless we break “the cycle of thoughtless buying.”
Hear that, America? The supply-chain crisis is all your fault, said James Freeman in The Wall Street Journal. You might think that President Joe Biden would be held at least partly responsible for this new “era of scarcity,” after he handed out “astronomical” sums through Covid-relief packages that fueled demand even while his extended unemployment checks deepened severe labor shortages. But his administration and its allies would rather blame the shallow, materialistic citizenry for “wanting plentiful goods and services.” The White House’s messaging to worried Americans has been “intentionally insulting,” said Kaylee McGhee White in WashingtonExaminer.com. Chief of Staff Ron Klain last week retweeted an economist who dismissed the supply crisis as a “high-class problem,” while press secretary Jen Psaki sarcastically lamented the “tragedy of the treadmill that’s delayed,” as if the only people suffering from this crisis were affluent home-gym owners. But millions of working families are watching food, gas, and other prices soar and wondering if “they have enough for groceries this month.”
Usually, shortages are an indication of a recession, said Jordan Weissmann in Slate.com. But our economy is booming, and the U.S. “is now actually importing more physical goods than ever before.” That “buying binge” is a direct result of the Biden administration’s wise decision to protect Americans’ incomes during the pandemic. If Christmas shopping is “a bit frustrating this year,” that’s surely a small price to pay for having avoided another Great Depression.
Easy for you to say, said Jim Geraghty in NationalReview.com.
The Denver public-school system is “struggling to get enough milk for breakfast and lunch,” and small businesses can’t get the goods they need to sell to stay afloat. It’s one thing “having to settle for your third-favorite brand of Greek yogurt,” said Amanda Mull in TheAtlantic.com. It will be another when “necessities such as food and medicine” become scarce, because they’re stuck in a global traffic jam behind containers filled with “hundred-dollar throw pillows.” Americans have been trained to be consumers, but if we want to do our part as citizens to keep the shortages from getting worse, we should re-evaluate what we really need and “stop shopping.”