Eggs ARE a Thing

It IS the economy, but not how the Dems say it is

“The price of eggs,” has become a meme, a shorthand for flogging orange voters, both MAGA and mere right-of-center partisans. The thinking goes, “Despite his many flaws, they voted for drumpf on one single issue, the price of eggs. Do they really think he’s going to do something about that?” Well, yeah, because he ran on that issue very specifically; or sometimes, it was bacon. They’re disinformed, of course, but they don’t know about the workings of economics.

To be fair, however, no one on the Dem side bothered to explain about grocery pricing. No one came out and said that typical inflation statistics do not include food or fuel prices. Instead, the Dems spent the better part of a year crowing about how they’d lowered inflation to nearly the ideal, 2% level. They went on and on about how great the economy was, how low unemployment was, how the U.S. had a better recovery from Covid than other developed nations.

All of which belied the average person’s daily experience. People working three jobs [with no health insurance] to pay the rent didn’t appreciate being told how good they had it. When the weekly cash register total at the grocery store skyrocketed, most people couldn’t take consolation in the supposedly stellar economic conditions. Many pundits have said that food prices generally increased by….not all that much. But that depends on who’s making the judgment. For example, per a CBS tracker, on average, a half-gallon of milk went up 30% from before the pandemic until two months ago, when the last figures were available. Ground beef went up 48%. A loaf of bread peaked at 41%, but has gone down a bit. And that dozen eggs went up about 160%.

As for utilities, natural gas prices rose by 41%, while electricity was up by 32% per kilowatt hour. As a national average, gas at the pump rose from a hair under $3.00 in 2019, peaked at slightly under $5.00 during the pandemic, and is now back to its pre-pandemic level—one small positive trend.

All this to say that, if you’re a working person, a $2.00 price hike for eggs isn’t great, but it’s not tragic, if that was the only stock item whose cost went up. When every item the normal family buys is now significantly more expensive, then it’s another story.

It’s not just basic necessities, either. In our own household, we’ve seen prices for everything from lumber to car parts to craft components shoot way up. The cost for a load of boards to repair our porch ceiling went up by 75% from three years ago.

Rent costs are going the way of food prices. In the Cleveland area, where we live, average rents are up over 25%, while home prices are up 33%. This, when Cleveland is supposed to be one of the most affordable metro areas in the country. Even the already-high costs in Miami climbed by 36% and 35%, respectively, as an example of a more expensive area.

There’s no point in even going into detail about the price gouging in the healthcare and child care industries; we’ve all been smacked in the face with doctor or hospital bills, even if we have insurance. On the child care front, stories are circulating that parents are becoming ever more desperate to find affordable venues to place children while they go out and work their [sometimes multiple] jobs. The Census Bureau reports that, “…child care expenses are untenable for families throughout the country,” amounting to 8% to 19.3% of median family income in 2022.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these prices are NOT going to go down. We’re not looking at anomalies or temporary hikes to offset supply shortages or shipping bottlenecks. This is our reality now, thanks to greedy corporations, and it’s never going back to the way it was four years ago. We’re stuck with outlandishly high costs forever. Dems can say “inflation” is down and pat themselves on the back, but that’s because the percentage leaves out enough expenses to render it irrelevant. And contrary to the stories relayed by our government, wages are not pacing the increases in goods and services. Take into account that employers are looking for ways to cut benefits, cut headcounts, reduce more people to contract roles, and demand more work and productivity for the same wages, and the picture is even worse. Whether we’re talking about families or individuals, people feel trapped, with no end in sight.

It’s no wonder that so much of the population is frustrated and disillusioned---just plain angry with the B.S. that’s constantly handed out by both political parties. If they pay attention at all, they listen to the Dems, and they’re told that everything is wonderful, and they have no reason to complain. If they listen to drumpf and the MAGAs, they hear that, yes, everything is terrible, BUT mango man alone can fix things. He can’t, of course, unless he wants to implement large-scale trust-busting and rein in the corporations, which he’ll never, ever do. Quite the contrary: his stated position is to give the corporations more, more, more. President Biden took some steps toward breaking up the monopolies, but it was much too little, much too late. And then his party* proceeded to tell voters that their difficulties were imagined. *Except for Governor Tim Walz, I have to say. He was a minority of one, talking to citizens realistically, acknowledging their pain. Too bad he was relegated to the hinterlands and the rest of the party didn’t follow his example.

Rather than chastising potential supporters for just being clueless, perhaps the Dems would do better to sit down and look at the real, everyday problems of much of the country. It IS about the price of eggs, in a nut shell. That’s just a symbol for exorbitant costs for everything, costs that the average person frequently struggles—often unsuccessfully—to cover. A few years ago, Bernie Sanders famously said that the cost for replacing a $400 water heater would break most families. The situation is at least as critical now. If the Dems don’t figure that out and promote actual, effective measures to alleviate the pain, they can say good-bye to future wins. James Carville just wrote a really tone-deaf op-ed in which he theorized that the Dem loss in November was due to a lack of messaging about the economy. No, actually, the loss was due to a lack of action and to consistently misleading messaging that insulted audiences who knew better.