1 week Ago
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com . Want to purchase today’s print edition? Here’s a map of single-copy locations. Sign up for our daily newsletter here I don’t understand.
The pundits say that the voters went with the economy more than any other issue. Inflation hurts. I get that.
But here’s what I don’t get. Didn’t the inflation result from COVID-19, which Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, ignored both from a health standpoint and an economic standpoint? Didn’t the inflation result from supply-chain problems? Remember the empty shelves at CVS and any number of other stores, because their warehouses didn’t have enough employees, enough essential workers, to get the products from warehouses to stores (not to mention from the manufacturers to the warehouses)? When the worst of the pandemic was over, there continued to be a shortage of needed workers, something that could have been helped by giving more work permits to immigrants. But no.
Instead, immigrants were demonized by politicians, whipping up unwarranted fear and outrage. (By the way, the grand deportation of all undocumented people will be followed by a grand downward spiral of our economy.) There were dire reports, after the pandemic, that there would be a major recession.
Yet it didn’t happen. It was averted. The Federal Reserve and the Biden economic team made some savvy decisions that prevented the recession from materializing.
Yes, there has been inflation, due to the pandemic, not due to Biden or any of his policies. It could have been so much worse. Under Trump, it will get worse.
Trump’s promised tariffs will increase the price of many goods we get from overseas or just next door from Canada. Need a new car? Want a reliable one? Buy it now, before Trump’s inauguration. If you wait, the price may double.
So just how much do you want to pay for food? You’re unhappy about the current price of food? Wait till the people who plant, grow and harvest your food get deported. Because the number of agricultural work permits that is allowed is significantly less than the number needed to grow our food. So, we hire people without documents, because we actually need them.
They are essential. Fix the number of work permits so that they reflect the number of agriculture (and other) workers that are actually needed. Do you remember Georgia and H.
B. 87, a draconian anti-immigrant bill, in 2011? Immigrant agricultural (and other) workers fled the state and the crops rotted in the fields. Oh, those unintended consequences ! How will our food be harvested, or will it? How will whatever is harvested make it to market? In short supply, whatever food does make it to grocery stores will be priced higher.
When demand outstrips supply, prices go up. That’s how our economy works. Need some construction? A new house? Remodeling? Need a new subdivision or shopping center? Immigrants, some undocumented for lack of available work permits, are a big part of the construction industry.
You can bet prices for construction will go up, again, making affordable housing, already in very short supply, even less affordable. People, we’re not connecting the economic dots, let alone practicing human decency!.
