Ted Rall for February 21, 2022

He’s old, but he isn’t daft.

FFS, corps are having record profits, CEOs & execs are getting big bonuses and raises. The supply chain is breaking down, slowing products from the Wall Street bottom liners outsourced factories to the market, decreasing supply and driving up prices even further. The Owning Class is engaged in wholesale looting, and Real Leftist Ted Rall is putting this drivel out? GTFO.

Wages are up and people are still buying. If people are willing to spend over retail for vehicles and such, inflation will continue.

The white supremacist backed road blocks impeding commerce between the USA and Canada certainly didn’t help do anything good to slow inflation.

There goes Rall, leaving the progressive reservation again.

I knew I should have kept that W.I.N. button….

Not daft, just senile.

Sadly we — conservatives, liberals, liberals, progressives, et al — do not know how to correct inflation and out of our ignorance rather than working together on solutions, instead, start blaming each other. Isn’t this foolish?

Rall seems to have made the wrong choice between his probable intelligence and his republican leanings. Maybe he misses Trump?

Gas in Germany is 7 bucks a gallon. Damn that Biden.

Can’t we all just get along?

Republicans are desperate to find an issue they can run with. One fizzle after another. Hillary still seems the best bet for them.

With the supply chain bottlenecks gradually easing, and society opening back up (and hopefully, the trucker convoy in Ottawa ending as Canada opens back up). Prices should start stabilizing, hopefully. If not, the Fed will likely raise interest rates to tamp down inflation (like then Fed Chairman Paul Volker did in the early 80’s). That would be bad news for people looking to buy homes, but good news for people with savings accounts since interest rates have been close to zero for years. But we’ll see what happens.

During the oil embargo of the early 1970s, we came together as a nation to help ease the problem. We car-pooled. We grouped our shopping trips to make fewer of them, accomplishing more each time. We bought more compact, fuel-efficient cars. We took fewer pleasure trips. We even dealt with a system where our license-plate number determined whether we could buy gas today or whether we’d have to wait for tomorrow. We reduced maximum speed limits on interstates to conserve fuel. Most people didn’t like the fact that we had to do that, but we did, because we were united.

Today, we complain and blame. We leave our gas-guzzlers running while we leave them “for just a few minutes” in the parking lot, or to keep the A/C going for a passenger who doesn’t want to go into the store with the driver and couldn’t possibly deal with an open window.

Time was, when someone complained, the proper response was, “So, what’s your better idea?” I’ll ask that of all the Republicans who are stoking the blame fires. If they really wanted to serve the people, they’d be promoting a better idea. But this is a re-run of the “Repeal-and-pretend-to-have-a-replacement” strategy.

A president can’t control gas prices. They are an international commodity and subject pressures no one person can control. Anyone who thinks otherwise has no grasp of economics and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

The same is true of the kind of inflation the entire world is experiencing right now. This is beyond the control of governments. What Biden should be saying is the same thing economists are saying – inflation sucks and is scary, but it’s temporary. Our best bet is to ride it out.

Is this a problem for the Democrats to solve? Putin—Trump’s favorite—is about to drive gas prices sky-high.

Presidents have almost no ability to affect gas prices…or they would.

People are hypersensitive to gas prices primarily because the price is flashed before their eyes several—even dozens—of times per day. People who cannot tell you the price of milk or bread will bemoan rising gas prices—as they contribute to it with their gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks. Urban tanks to drive to Walmart.

Is not panicking about inflation as it were the end of the world what some people call pretending?

Annnnd the Ted we knew and didn’t love is back. The bigoted, ageist Ted. How we didn’t miss him.

We have started a fun new game around the house. Every time something goes wrong, we acknowledge it’s Biden’s fault.

Stub your toe on the table? That table wasn’t there before November. Biden’s fault.

Power goes out during a storm? Biden’s fault.

Lawn Mower won’t start? Biden’s fault.

And instead of cursing when you stub your toe, we yell “Benghazi!”

It’s fun! It’s easy! And the whole family can play!

No one is “pretending” that inflation is not happening, that is ridiculous. Placing the reason this round of inflation came, and it’s effect correctly allows people to make the right decisions for themselves.

In February of 2021 the Saudis announced they were raising the price of oil to make up for their 40% loss in profit due to COVID-19 in 2020. Other industries followed that lead. The inflation is not limited to the U.S., it is world-wide. Biden went to the Saudis and then to U.S. oil companies and the price came down slightly. Since then it’s back on the rise due to the crisis in Ukraine. The rest of the economy in the U.S. is thriving with record low unemployment, wages up, spending way up, a ‘workers market’ due to a shortage of workers because of very low immigration, and near coming out of tRump’s recession. Had more people been vaccinated sooner and wore masks we’d be out of the recession already.

It’s all about the truth.

Shout out for green stamps! Haven’t thought of those in a long while.

Ted I want Trump back Rall

Actually, I think Victory Gardens are a very good idea. Replace those idiotic lawns with food plants, and thereby reduce the need for food industry megafarms, reduce transport thousands of miles, with its environmental impact, and save money. Too bad the title is so outdated.

$5 for a gallon of gas? Gee maybe you shouldn’t plan your life around your car. You’ve had 50 years to make a new plan.