Inflation’s More Than Just The Price At The Pump. It Hits From All Sides.

For most consumers, inflation hits home based on the prices they pay at the pump and the grocery store. When you see gasoline going from $2.50 per gallon to $5.00 per gallon (and more in places like California), you don’t need a Ph.D. in economics to understand inflation.

That’s true as far as it goes, but inflation is insidious and hits consumers not just in visible ways but in many invisible ways as well.

The Biden administration wants to lower gasoline prices by permitting more ethanol in gasoline this summer. That’s contrary to the climate alarmist Green New Scam agenda, but it could lower the price of gas at the pump by a few cents. The savings are illusory because ethanol produces lower miles per gallon performance on your car which means you have to fill up more frequently even if the price of each fill-up is a bit lower.

Still, it gives the Democrats a talking point as they head into the mid-term elections. The problem is that ethanol comes from corn and there’s only so much corn to go around. If corn is diverted to ethanol, there’s less available for animal feed (the main use of corn). That means the price of corn goes up and so the price of beef goes up because cows eat corn.

So, your savings at the pump are erased by higher beef prices at the grocery store. And so it goes.

Another example of hidden inflation is described in this article. We all like the convenience and fast delivery offered by Amazon.

Of course, Amazon uses a huge fleet of trucks to make those deliveries and those trucks run on diesel fuel or gasoline to make their rounds. And the price of fuels is skyrocketing. To maintain its profit margins, Amazon is putting a 5% surcharge on all purchases to cover the added fuel costs.

They could just raise the price of their merchandise, but a surcharge allows Amazon to claim its prices haven’t changed. It also points a finger at the Biden administration (or Putin, if you prefer) as the cause of the inflation surcharge rather than Amazon merchants.

That’s all part of the blame game. The bottom line is you pay more for delivered goods because the transportation costs of delivery have gone up.

Inflation does not arise in just a single product or a single market. It’s everywhere … and it’s getting worse.

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