Opinion: The Slow Creep of Inflation or The Allegory of the Frog in Boiling Water. A cautionary tale.

by Artie_NavarrePhoto byPixabay Image

Inflation has a face. It’s financial hardship. Living without. Budgets being stretched to the breaking point. It’s average people working two jobs to buy what one job used to buy.

But in today’s media, it’s a talking point. An opportunity to show long lines at gas stations and rising prices at the supermarket.

We know inflation is bad. Just not always the same. Not the incessant pounding an economy takes when the price of gas goes up and up. Sometimes it’s more incremental.

Like walking in a light drizzle. Once around the block and nothing terrible happens. Walk a mile to school and you’re soaked.

Distance matters with inflation. Time matters as well. How long it goes on and how far-reaching its effects are, eventually catches up to all of us at some point in time.

Inflation as a False Flag

Inflation cannot exist in a vacuum. Without history. Without a time and a dollar amount to compare today’s prices to, it’s just another number. Another statistic that someone on television or YouTube is trying to explain to us.

There’s a slow deceptive creep to inflation, much like what happens to the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water. Before you know it, it’s too late.

A 12-ounce package of bacon at Trader Joe’s markets in California costs $6.49. It was $4.99 at the beginning of 2022. For those pulling out their iPhone to check the math – that’s $8.65 a pound.

A pound of bacon in 1970 cost $.90. Just to note the trend over time.

A pound of butter at that same market in January 2022 cost $2.99. Today’s price $3.99. In 1970 - $1.30.

A price increase is inevitable. Nothing in anyone’s lifetime has remained the same throughout. We’re used to it. At a certain point, we stop seeing it. Bread going from $3.49 to $3.69 a loaf is unnoticed. Slide the card through the machine and pay for it, along with everything else.

But inflation is the distraction. It’s what gets attention because it puts the squeeze on the average person. An 8% increase in food, or a $.45 per gallon increase in gas doesn’t sound life-threatening. Having 8% less to spend at the end of the month on rent, medicine, and utilities become life-threatening.

And why is that?

Inflation becomes front pages news and election day fodder as everyone with a microphone or pointer is showing us how bad rising costs are. While pointing fingers at everyone else for being the cause of it.

But there is always another cause. Something beyond the obvious political statement or area of chaos in another part of the world.

Another influence hiding effectively beneath the headlines. That sheds more light on why apartment rents in your city or state are going up.

Or why your budget is getting stretched as the percentage of your income going toward rent creeps ever higher from 25% to 35% and in some cases 45% and more.

What also tends to miss the nightly news recaps are the hundreds of thousands of homes being bought as investments through large private equity funds that are driving rental prices higher nationwide and causing ownership in those areas to drop as fewer homes are on the market or affordable to the average person. Perhaps because those same private equity firms have large portfolios of media stock.

Or that according to Oxfam, one-third of the workforce in the US earn less than $15 per hour. That’s 52 million workers.

We often regard inflation like the frog regards the slightly warmer water; first as interesting, then annoying and ultimately beyond its control.

Inflation is real. Its proximate cause is open to interpretation. Be it gas prices or gouging Big Oil. The war in Ukraine or “savvy” CEOs taking advantage of the times to raise prices and pad bottom lines. Inflation, just like our lives, does not exist in a vacuum.

There are reasons for it. Some unavoidable. Some are acceptable when compared to the alternatives. But sometimes, some might even say, most times, inflation like climate change or the rising cost of a steak, is preceded by human interference.

The pursuit of profit or future gain or the controlling of a financial ecosystem.

Distractions are annoying, not unlike frenetic and overly loud commercials on TV. Since we don’t have a universal remote to mute them, we need to find ways to look around them. To find their cause and the reasons they are gaining such front-page interest.

Then do what we’ve always done in the past to protect our own long-term futures. Take effective action. Carry a placard. Boycott a brand. Write to a representative or better yet vote for one that will listen.