U.S. freedom waxing, waning
The Bureau of Labor Statistics latest numbers are in, and those numbers aren’t pretty.
Federalist scribe Elle Reynolds reported: “n the average U.S. city, ground beef is up 14.9 percent since last March, boneless stew beef is up 24.3 percent, bacon is up 23.1 percent, boneless chicken breasts are up 17.6 percent, eggs are up 25.9 percent, milk is up 17 percent, frozen orange juice concentrate is up 18 percent, and ground coffee is up 15.8 percent. Meanwhile, fuel oil has jumped a whopping 71.5 percent, and utility gas is up 23.3 percent.”
Full disclosure: I’m friends and a former co-worker of several Federalist folk (including co-founder and Publisher Ben Domenech and Executive Editor Joy Pullman), and my byline appears on the Federalist site from time to time (mostly cultural reviews and observations on faith and the arts).
Reynolds continued: “Many of these urban numbers don’t even capture how steeply prices have risen for middle America, however. In the Midwest, ground beef has risen 24.5 percent, almost 10 percentage points more than the urban average.”
These numbers are significantly higher than the 8.5% inflation we’re told is choking the wallets of U.S. consumers who are simultaneously struggling to afford filling up at the local Sunoco. The current cost of inflation swallows $4,200 of annual wages. You don’t think this “tax” has a negative effect on every U.S. household and disproportionately impacts the poor?
I’m not telling readers something they don’t already know. My card-playing buddies know the score as well. Where once we talked about musical groups long since disbanded in between hands of euchre, now the topic of conversation invariably turns to economics. Some of my cardslinging pals are living on fixed incomes. Some lead a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. Still others are quite successful, but they didn’t get that way by being foolish with their incomes or investments. Everyone feels the pinch.
Your real earning power has fallen considerably. Throw in skyrocketing gasoline prices, and it becomes nearly impossible for an average household to get ahead.
Everybody knows what policies are responsible for our current plight regardless the humbuggery and codswallop emanating from our nation’s capital and expressed elsewhere on a weekly basis in this fish wrap. No amount of blame shifting to a president long since voted from office will change those facts, nor will it memory hole which administration bungled the Afghanistan surrender, exacerbated problems on our country’s Southern border, nor negate who was staring blankly out the Oval Office window when Ukraine was invaded.
Our current predicament is a direct result of policies implemented by the current ice cream addict and hair sniffer in chief as well his legion of legislative lotus eaters.
But … Orange Man Bad! And … fascism! For all the former president’s pot stirring, at least he wasn’t inducing flashbacks to the 1970s recession/stagflation during his one term in office. Anyone who goes all-in slappy for any politician regardless party affiliation deserves to have his or head examined.
For the record, your humble servant checked the planetrulers.com website to see where the United States falls on the freedom spectrum. Contrary to last week’s claim some countries “lean toward dictatorship. The United States is on this list,” every Map of World Freedom for each of the past 11 years grades the United States as “Free” on a scale that measures “Free,” “Partly Free,” and “Not Free” (for 2022, the “Not Free” category is labeled “Dictatorships”). You’re welcome, dear readers.
The Frasier Institute ranked us sixth in its 2019 freedom report.
This is not to say there isn’t room for significant improvement, but overall, we enjoy an embarrassment of riches (albeit eroding the past few decades) when it comes to measuring freedom. For the time being, at least. It’s always one step up, two steps back.