I can die now! I have heard everything three times! There must be some ultra-right, fascist, libertarian double speak school they send these guys to.
I first heard the idea they didn’t want to give people raises because they would just spend it. You know, on groceries and housing – those kinds of frivolous things. It was a union spokesman in England when the interviewer was leaning on him for wanting to get the transportation workers more money. He had excellent comebacks, of course.
The next was the American head of the federal bank. He said they would have to raise the interest rates to keep inflation down. It would mean they would have to put off purchases like houses and such but it would ‘cool’ the economy down. Never mind that when Donald Trump wanted to get re-elected, he kept interest rates down – even after the yield curve inverted. I guess the well-being of the people as a whole isn’t as important as one ego driven empty shell.
Then the last place I heard it was Jason Nixon. He is the temporary (Alberta) Minister of Finance. I guess he has no intention of ever running for premier. Nixon is planning to pay down the Alberta debt with a lot of it and I have no issue with that. But he has no intention of cutting individual Albertans a cheque like they are in several provinces.
Nixon, too, has the idea that people spending money on things like groceries and whatever will just feed inflation. I think he is wrong. What slowing down inflation needs is targeting the root causes such as price gouging and stupidity.
A big part of inflation can be attributed to rising costs of health care. That is in large part our fault. The anti-mask, anti-vax movement has kept our health care system at the breaking point for three years now. All the people taking up beds, the overtime, the meds which are new and therefore expensive wouldn’t have been on the books if we had not been so proud. This is something to consider as Monkey Pox and polio loom on the horizon. Imagine keeping someone in an iron lung for 60 years. There are also other diseases that are begin reported in waste water which doesn’t mean they are coming back, it means they are already here.
What will drive costs up is the scrimping and saving that people will have to do to get through this. He says he might look at indexing AISH and seniors’ benefits at a later date which means he has no intention of doing any such thing.
If your local businesses are taking hits on things like groceries, hardware and clothes because people are reducing the quality of the food, not replacing that tap that is wearing out or not replacing those ratty old jeans it will drive up the cost per unit of doing business. So the stuff they do sell will have to cost more to keep the doors open.
I do not think it is unreasonable of people to want decent food.
Nixon is simply waging his war on inflation by finding a comfortable target – people who are not his friends.
I do have to give some anonymous creep his propers. I am 68 years old and I have never heard the argument that buying groceries causes inflation. That guy is a marketing genius!
Eva Sartorius,
High Prairie