Our President needs to spend some time on the bully pulpit on the attack. (1) an easy target, attacking price gougers (2) explaining that some of inflation is due to paying the underpaid better and that this is only right and proper -— if we pay more for a big mac at McDonald’s it’s because the staff is being paid better [3] Covid required a lot of government spending to prevent a lot of people going bankrupt and being unable to pay their bills and this certainly did push inflation but it was the right thing to do and we in the U.S. have done better economically in recovering from Covid than any other country [4] we have very low unemployment !! [5] food prices rose last year by 1 per cent, less than the rate of inflation.
In regard of food prices Paul Krugman had a very useful article in today’s NY Times (21 May). He said a lot of people’s perception of inflation is comparing current food prices with 2020 prices. But in the last year food prices increased at about 1 per cent which is way below the rate of inflation. He said something that is not obvious to many people -— that it would be a totally bad idea to try to go back to the prices of 2020 because it would cause economic disaster.