I buy the store brand butter, the cheapest available at our local supermarket. Today as I was purchasing a pound of butter, the cashier, on older woman (I’m guessing over 60, maybe over 65) asked me if I knew how much the cost of the butter I had just purchased had risen overnight?
“No,” I said.
“It’s $2.79 a pound to day. Yesterday it was $2.17 a pound.”
“Wow.” (I actually said that). I asked her if she knew why. She said she didn’t. But she also said that everyday she keeps seeing the price of food going up. “But never wages,” she added.
I went home and used my calculator to determine that pound of butter I bought had increased in price 22%. I guess I bought it on the wrong day. I live in upstate NY. Lots of local dairy farms here that provide milk, and provide dairy products. I know its not the transportation costs.
Then I looked around. It seems food prices have been rising all year. Check out this story from March:
WASHINGTON – Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years. […]
Food prices soared 3.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since November 1974. Most of that increase was due to a sharp rise in vegetable costs, which increased nearly 50 percent. That was the most in almost a year. Meat and dairy products also rose.
Food prices rose the highest since 1974 in February, 2011. And they haven’t stopped rising. Nor is America the only place this is occurring. In the United Kingdom food prices rose 5.7% as of June. World food prices are at or near record highs according to the United Nations:
Global food prices rose sharply in June, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), after a steep increase in the price of sugar.
The price of sugar rose by 14% last month, as a result of high demand and lower production in Brazil.
We’re told that the Consumer price index, a measure of inflation is low at 3.7%, but that is primarily due to a flat housing market. No one buys a house every year (well maybe billionaires do) but we all have eat. And when you consider the costs that most impact an individual’s or family’s budget, food, health care and energy costs are all going up at rates that exceed the official CPI. This may not mean much to rich corporate executives whose income is increasing faster than the rate of inflation, but for everyone else its bad news.
Because that cashier at the Supermarket is right. Wages for the middle and lower classes are not increasing.
Incomes for 90% of Americans have been stuck in neutral, and it’s not just because of the Great Recession. Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for at least a generation, while the wealthiest tier has surged ahead at lighting speed.
In 1988, the income of an average American taxpayer was $33,400, adjusted for inflation. Fast forward 20 years, and not much had changed: The average income was still just $33,000 in 2008, according to IRS data. […]
Meanwhile, as corporate profits come roaring back and the stock market charges ahead, the wealthiest people continue to eclipse their middle-class counterparts.
“I think it’s a terrible dilemma, because what we’re obviously heading toward is some kind of class warfare,” [Alan Johnson, a Wall Street compensation consultant] said.
So costs of basic necessities are skyrocketing, unemployment is at levels we haven’t seen for decades, but we need to consider cuts to social security and medicare? We need to cut student financial aid and spending on higher education even as student costs of tuition and fees soar? We need to provide more tax cuts for the upper 1% of Americans?
We need to pay for wasteful and expensive wars overseas to protect the profits of the most profitable corporations on the the planet? And worse, we also must continue to to provide BILLIONS of DOLLARS in tax subsidies to that industry? Meanwhile we are supposed to cut funding for the development of alternative renewable sources of energy that could save us trillions of dollars in future defense costs.
I’m confused.
Billionaires and millionaires need every tax benefit imaginable and more tax cuts even though all their wealth has not trickled down to stimulate the economy. Poor people need to sacrifice more. Old people (excuse me, old people who aren’t rich) should see their social safety net shredded. Unions need to be destroyed so the Prison Industry can employ prisoners as slave labor to take their jobs. Social Security should be privatized so Wall Street can get their hands on our retirement funds that they don’t already control?
Homeless people should not be fed and those who do feed them should be arrested. On the other hand, Banks should not be prosecuted for their illegal foreclosures. Financial reforms (what few there are) to reign in the risks run by our Wall Street overlords (corporations that nearly crashed the global economy) should be eliminated. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency should be de-funded and defanged.
Our crumbling, decaying infrastructure (bridges, roads, electrical grid) should be ignored? The EPA should be gutted so known polluters can get away with murder by illegal toxic waste disposal? Climate change should be denied despite the mounting evidence evidence that it will result in lower food production, mass extinctions, increased spread of contagious diseases, wildfires, droughts, decreased fresh water resources, heat waves, and social unrest including the increased risk of regional nuclear wars?
I guess in our bizzaro world where corporations have all the freedoms that really matter, and ordinary people do not, the answer to all those questions, is apparently “Yes.” Even though a lot of smart people know we are committing economic and societal suicide by continuing down this path, I don’t see how to stop the insanity that began when folksy (“welfare queens driving Cadillacs”) Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. Maybe you do, maybe you have the solution. I sure hope so, but all I see is one political party (Republicans) comprised of religious extremists bent on taking over the world and Mad Hatters bent on watching it burn, and another party (Democrat–the “progressive caucus” and a few brave and principled politicians excluded) who can’t seem to say “No!” to the crazies’ ever more outrageous and destructive demands.
And I have to pay 22% more for butter today than I did yesterday. Come to think of it, that’s the least of my worries.
