A more balanced look at inflation

Most economists agree that people give too much credit or blame to presidents about what’s right or what’s wrong with the economy.

When we were blaming the president for inflation, independent studies showed that 3050% of inflation was due to excessive profits by large corporations. Major oil companies reported $700 billion in profits while we were paying a lot more for gasoline. The higher gasoline prices were also due to the war in Ukraine. Again we chose to blame the current president.

A number of products are now being sold in slightly smaller containers for the same price.

In the early ‘80s when Ronald Reagan was president, his administration figured out how to get around monopoly laws. As a result, four companies control about 80% of the meat market, putting the squeeze on farmers and ranchers and consumers.

Large corporations gave us big box stores. While convenient, they squeezed out the local stores.

Large businesses often opposed increasing the minimum wage, which has caused many people to continue to struggle. Increasing the minimum wage has almost always been good for local businesses.

The sad part is a few years ago we gave a $1 trillion tax break to the wealthy and large businesses. Possibly that had something to do with which legislators were receiving donations from large businesses.

These are the same legislators who tried to cut back on legislation that would help reduce food insecurity for children and tax credits that were shown to reduce child poverty.

There is a theory that putting money into the hands of the poor will result in them spending that money in the local economy, therefore benefiting local businesses.

There have been advantages to having some big businesses, but there has to be a balance that is often missing.