Inflation bears watching, not exaggerating: Tend to economy without deceiving public about it
They gave fair warning that pouring cash into a depressed economy when the supply of goods was constrained would cause prices to rise. Economics 101. So why are so many expressing surprise, outrage even, as government strategies that have worked to put us back on our feet have also had the predicted side effect — and likely a temporary one at that?
Equally predictable, but more disturbing, is that the venerable rhetorical strategy of exaggeration has become so normalized on our political game boards. Anything to score points for the team. But, it's not helping.
Sure, even some on these pages have cautioned that the rising prices for gas and groceries are real and that Democratic candidates heading into 2022 would do well not to dismiss public concerns about them. Can't argue with that.
But at the same time, it's important to acknowledge a more powerful, big-picture reality: We're in better shape than we've been for some time. Unemployment numbers are near historic lows, wages are rising and workers' tax-deferred retirement savings plans are climbing in a stock market that, despite COVID-prompted jags, is bumping up against historic highs.
President Joe Biden can't take credit for all the gains. The Federal Reserve's steady hand has more direct influence in many ways. But the administration's stimulus spending during the pandemic; its infrastructure law, passed with a modicum of Republican help; and its proposals to bolster health care, day care and other social safety nets, while pressing to clean up the nation's energy production, promise to make lives better and steer us toward a more humane and sustainable future.
All we got from the last president, by contrast, was lies, meanness, huffing and puffing. But as 2021 pulls to a close, those working to advance the new administration's efforts face an opposition that still has no plan other than obstruction, personal attacks, exaggeration, duplicity and dissembling. We've grown used to this over the years, from the fake Benghazi scandal to the overblown email controversy to the outrage over Obama's tan suit and over anything Hunter Biden ever did.
But this is a time for serious people. There's important work at hand.
Millions can't afford health insurance. Voters' rights need buttressing. Air and water pollution and climate change need addressing. Here in Florida, Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades need replumbing. We need to gird for a new COVID variant, ease access to vocational and college education, lift up the homeless, build housing our workforce can afford and improve mass transit systems in the face of population growth.
Impediments to the will of the people, from voter suppression to the filibuster, must be tamed, so that the only agenda is a fairer, more fulsome America for all.
It was encouraging to see two conservative commentators sever ties with Fox News, objecting not just to one host's constant skewering of the truth but to the insistence that anyone calling him or herself Republican must align — publicly, anyways — with the worst of the party's extremists. Why, after all, should anyone who believes in the worthy values of cautious spending, righteousness and freedom from government overreach, feel obliged to promote the violence-tinged lies of those with no moral North Star?
Those who remember the 17% mortgage rates of the late 1970s know that inflation is to be assiduously guarded against. It robs the poor and middle class the worst, with every trip to the supermarket, with every lost hope of paying down credit cards, let alone of becoming a homeowner. But these days are not those.
In October, prices did spring back 6.2% compared with the pandemic onset days of October 2020. Wage increases haven't kept pace. And the Fed's standard response to suppress inflation, raising interest rates, could risk recession. So, yes, it bears watching, as the Fed, the Treasury, and Congress and the White House are doing.
But to ignore gains being made daily and to exaggerate challenges for political gamesmanship, risk twisting public perceptions in ways that cause problems rather than solve them. It's time we got past make-believe and "anything goes" disparagement as partisan strategies, when in fact, we're doing well.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Editorial: Inflation bears watching, not exaggerating
