‘Greedflation’ And Other Tall Tales
“Greedflation.” “Shrinkflation.” You have to hand it to the Left; they have an unending ability to invent words to advance their ideology and describe crises — even those that they create.
We know it’s election time because like the cicadas who return every five years or so, Bob Casey has returned to the public eye.
More evidence that the Left has captured the Democrat Party: one-time “moderate” and “pro-life” Bob Casey’s return comes with him singing from their new, left-wing prayer book. He tweets and introduces legislation to stop greedflation & shrinkflation. (It’s amazing how troubling poll numbers prompt politicians into action.)
Because Democrats can never admit that their policies cause harm and always need to blame someone else for the problems, they invented new words to try to cover-up the number one problem facing all of us: Inflation.
The high cost of everything: gasoline, heating our homes, buying groceries, credit card interest and mortgages. President Reagan often noted that inflation is the cruelest “tax” — it eats away at our paychecks and savings. We fall further and further behind.
You don’t have to be an economist to know that our painful inflation was caused by a series of bad, misguided policies — any one of which was harmful, but which together are causing really bad inflation for a really long time. And the Democrats have no interest in undoing their inflation-causing policies.
Being a Democrat is never having to say you’re sorry, or admit that your policies failed. Because if you really believe and “know” you’re right, you can’t be blamed when things go wrong. (Or we’re supposed to tolerate the harm because it’s necessary to advance their ideology.)
Dear voters, Bob Casey, Joe Biden and the Democrats are imploring you not to blame them for inflation: blame those money-grubbing businesses. This is one of the modern Democrat Party’s only remaining ties to the old-school Democrat Party: blame “big business.” (Just please don’t get angry at Facebook, Google, Amazon, the media conglomerates, or the people building wind turbines. They’re good. Get mad at the other big businesses.)
This Democrat-created problem began with locking us down for too long and reopening too slowly. Production fell. Supply chains were broken. Supply and Demand 101: reduce supply and prices go up. Not due to greed, due to reality — manufacturers and sellers have fixed costs and need to recoup money. If they can’t sell 100 pairs of jeans at $40 because they only have 30 pairs, they start selling them at $75 or $100 a pair just trying to meet payroll and expenses.
The problem was compounded by even more “emergency” spending in 2021 because Biden had to show us that he really cared. Adding in Biden’s “covid relief,” Washington spent more additional money than its annual budget. Then, having helped cause inflation, and having heard voters complain about high gasoline prices and inflation, they gave us the “Inflation Reduction Act.”
Yet, even Democrat politicians admitted — before Biden’s signature was dry on the Act — that it was really the “green new deal.” Even more spending. Plus now the federal government put laws in place to slow the production and exploration of American natural gas and oil — putting Democrat rhetoric into reality. More spending, plus policies to slow energy production: brilliant!
Then when soaring gas prices continued to soar, Biden “remembered” economics and increased the supply of oil. Not by repealing laws or regulations or issuing permits for exploration, but by using up America’s Strategic Reserve. That’s the (formerly) huge reserve of oil in case of war or hurricanes: emergencies that either use up lots of oil or when production comes to a halt. It’s not paper over inflation. (By the way, we still haven’t restocked—almost three years later.)
Pump in trillions of dollars. Enact policies to slow energy production, exploration and future production. Use up our emergency reserves. This gets us $4/gasoline and rising inflation.
And those rising prices add to the costs of everything made, shipped, sold that requires energy: much of it oil and natural gas. Even farming requires fuel and fertilizer — which is made from natural gas components.
And, kaboom. Some items are much higher because the higher price of energy gets added three, four or five times, from production to consumption.
Since most of us are employees, we see our paychecks shrink and savings melt away. So we demand higher wages. Prices go up to pay the higher wages. But we were already behind and our savings shrunk. Our higher wages have grown slower than inflation. So, we are only shrinking the size of the hole in our pockets.
It’s as if Democrat politicians wanted to create inflation. Every major policy decision has made things worse. All because they can’t admit they were wrong. They refuse to give-up on the left-wing ideology that defies common sense.
Instead, Bob Casey tweets about shrinking bags of chips or smaller cereal boxes. And, friends, he’s outraged! He’s going to take action!
Is he going to reverse Washington’s wasteful spending? No.
Is he going to work to unleash Pennsylvania’s natural gas under our feet to create jobs, raise wages, and lower energy, farming and fuel costs? No.
Is he going to support policies to increase America’s oil production for this year and decades to come, to lower prices, create jobs and protect us from being beholden to oil producers that are our enemies? No.
He has a “better idea.” He introduced a bill to grow the power of the federal government so that agents and bureaucrats will “investigate” the sizes and prices of cereals and potato chips. Why? Because he blames “big chips” and “big cereal” for inflation.
He’s angry that when faced with soaring production, energy and wage costs, some cereal makers raised prices while others kept prices stable by making the boxes smaller. (He’s apparently “really mad” at the smaller box folks.)
Casey has checked all the boxes in the new Democrat playbook: (1) impose left-wing policies — especially slowing or stopping American energy; (2) ignore the problem — the harm the policies will obviously cause; (3) blame anyone else, never accept responsibly and never accept cause and effect; and (4) when forced to act in response to the public’s anger, pass out cash and grow the size and power of the federal government.
Together, all of this causes harm, makes the harm last longer, and makes recovery even harder if not impossible.
This isn’t “Monday morning quarterbacking.” It was obvious when they did these things.
Of course, companies aren’t saints — but there isn’t much else they can do when energy costs soar, interest rates rise and employees need higher wages. Where else is the money going to come from: raise prices or reduce portion sizes?
Biden, Casey and their policies ruined our family budgets, weakened our economy, and put us on a path to long-term pain.
The answer isn’t more left-wing policies — and it really isn’t a bigger, more powerful government.
The answer is less of those things…starting with less Democrat politicians in office micromanaging our lives in Congress.
Guy Ciarrocchi writes for Broad+Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania. He is a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation. The views expressed here may not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations. Follow Guy @PaSuburbsGuy
