Quite a sound article. Although, I want to add one thing.
People who are "Fixing the inflation and lowering prices" are not doing the right thing. It's like as if I would have been electrocuted and they would be feeding me some amazing medication to help me to heal while I was still connected to that cable!
We are saying that with time prices go higher. And that's expected. Not exactly super-cool, but we don't want there to be no inflation at all. It should be moderate, 1-2% is an awesome amount. But it's quite beyond a lot of people’s speaking.
The problem is that not a single person has told Joe Smith from the 5th Ave that he should be demanding a 7% raise this year. Why? Well, his boss has just produced 7% more due to inflation. Joe was working hard and he should have deserved something.
Instead of teaching Joe to be responsible for his income by asking raises we don't talk to Joe about it. He is not proactive in his business so he could ask for said raises. We explain poor Joe that he is totally at the disposal of some "Banks" or "Corporations" and stuff like that. We tell Joe that the only thing he could potentially do about the entire situation is to go to Walmart and clip a coupon, because they do have discounts.
A simple example: Let's look at the lumber prices [1] in around 1975. Not a best year to buy lumber. It was $150.
Now, let's plug this value into an inflation calculator. [2] $150 in 1975 is $900 today.
Let's look at the price of lumber in 2025 [1]. Currently the price of lumber is around $600.
That's good. It looks like the lumber has become cheaper. One would expect with 500% inflation since 1975 the lumber to cost $900, but it's only $600. So our Joe Smith is happy!
Yet he is not. He is not that concerned about the lumber. Yet in 2025 he looks at the price of an iPhone or a new computer or a car. Or a house. And he knows that he can't afford said house.
The issue is that in the past 30 years, Joe Smith has been content to get a 5-10% bonus at the end of the year and thought that that was a good deal. Those 7% raises looked like a stupid thing to do, and he was always content with just being able to get his one-time payout.
Let's be honest, at this day and age, the poverty guideline of $15k per year seems ridiculous. $120k per year per person should have been a new norm, providing $20k will go to taxes and at least $20k more to cover living expenses. Out of the remaining $80k, you'll get $20k more for food and car and $60k at your disposal. $60k will give you plenty of leeway for handling your medical, savings, and some nifty things one would like to have from time to time.
Instead of instilling this new norm and demanding money to be paid, we are quite content with $60k per year and the necessity to clip every coupon to make the ends meet.
This is definitely not easy, but the US is a country where $120k per year is not something unbelievable. And I'm pretty sure that a lot of the people reading this post already surpassed $120k per year. The issue is that your Uber driver or a guy working in a shop is getting $40k.
And the biggest issue is that we have a society where the guy with a $40k salary does not have an idea that he should be getting at least 80k, but has the idea that he should be running after sales and clipping coupons.
[1]https://www.macrotrends.net/2637/lumber-prices-historical-ch...
[2]https://www.usinflationcalculator.com