I have made several trips recently to Kansas. One of the things I always look forward to is the price of gasoline in the Sunflower State. Kansas is historically one of the five least expensive places to buy gasoline. Often it will be nearly 50 cents/gallon cheaper than Colorado.
Not so much this time. I did manage to save about a quarter per gallon but that was it. You know gas is high when it’s high in Kansas. Gasoline is one of the most readily available reminders of inflation.
The worst inflation in recent times was in 1980 during the Carter Administration when inflation got as high as 14%. The current rate of inflation is running at 7.9% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is the second worst inflation since that 1980 number. That 7.9% number is so far in 2022. In 2021, the inflation rate for the entire year was 7.0%.
A distant 3rd place on the inflation spectrum nationally was 3.39% in 2005, during the George Bush administration.
The three years with the least inflation? 2015, coming in at .7% (Obama); 2014 at .8% (Obama); and 2020, with 1.4% (Trump).
State inflation is never as high as federal inflation. The worst year for inflation in Colorado was in 1995 with an inflation rate of 4.3% under the Clinton regime. Under Biden last year, the state inflation rate was 3.54%. Under Trump, in 2017, the Colorado inflation rate was 3.39%.
The best years in Colorado? 1.18% in 2015 (Obama); 1.92% in 2019 (Trump) and 1.94% in 2012 (Obama).
What causes inflation? Not as simple to explain as you might think. In an article in the June 14, 2018 issue of inflationdata.com was the following paragraph.
“Debt is often associated with rising inflation, although it is not a linear correlation. The connection between debt and inflation has been the subject of intensive economic research and activity for decades. The general consensus is that high levels of government debt cause inflationary pressures.”
Mike Mozur, writing in Yahoo News, gave all of us of voting age part of the blame.
Mozur says, “Let’s start with a simple truth: we all share responsibility for today’s inflation and soaring national debt.” “Why? Because we elected
“Why? Because we elected the leaders whose economic and political decisions over the past two decades created inflationary conditions and allowed the debt to grow to today’s $28.4 trillion, up $7.2 trillion since 2017.”
IF Mozur is right, and increasing national debt is the primary cause of inflation we may soon eclipse the inflation rate of the Carter years.
So, is it an oversimplification to say that to control inflation our nation should live within its means?
According to the official website of the United States Census, the official population, as of July 10, 2019, is 329,215,520. Using the total, outstanding debt figure of $21,406,769,129,269.27 and the population number of 329,214,520, we come up with a figure of $65,023.57 per person to pay off our National Debt.
So, a family of four would currently owe over a quarter million in national debt.
The tragedy is much of that debt, in my opinion, is a means to get elected. Instead of doing what’s best for America, candidates from each party come up with a laundry list of freebies that they hope will sway votes in their direction. They seem to count on the fact that people don’t know that nothing is free. And they seem to be successful.
The sad part is that the answer to the inflation measure we started with, gasoline, is so simple to solve that it doesn’t even need to be mentioned. Agree or disagree, it’s simple. To make the price at the pumps go down, don’t depend on others for oil.