Precarity

 Paul Campos writes about a Times story on how $130,000 for a family of four really isn't enough money to live comfortably. The Times story looks at several areas where the above average family is struggling to make ends meet. When it comes to groceries, the toughest area to make ends meet is...meat. Beef prices are indeed really high right now, having risen 33% over the past two years.

What's striking is how much of this is policy based. The screwworm infestation is a result of Trump and Musk's gutting of various programs. There's a drought - thanks global warming. There's Trump's tariffs. The piece doesn't mention it, but deportations are likely to hurt meatpackers. 

Housing remains a real chokepoint for spending, and Trump is pitching a hissy fit over Congress' inability to pass his voter suppression act - the SAVE act - so he's not going to sign the recent bipartisan bill to help bring housing costs down (or at least help arrest their growth). It might become law without his signature, which is a really perfect example of Trumpism: deny the importance of legislation in governance. He killed the immigration reform bill from 2024. He passed his one piece of legislation and now wants to govern without consulting Congress.

This is the issue that bedeviled Biden, and his administration actually tried to address it. Trump called affordability a "made up Dumocrat word" so it's going to be hard to pivot for Republicans. Then there is the visual indictment of him trying to create some sort of Roman spectacle in DC. 

Having fucking idiots in charge of economic policy is really hard.

What's interesting, and neither Campos nor the Times addressed this, is that we've had this dynamic before in the 1970s. The difference is that we had far less wealth inequality in the '70s. So we not only have rising prices, but we have an elite that is just completely out of touch with the experience of even upper middle class Americans. If Elon Musk is making decisions about policy, you have a badly distorted policy environment.

If we begin to save American democracy this fall, we will be in a situation where Democrats will have to clean this mess up. Again. The problem is that one key pillar of solving this mess will be addressing the exploding national debt and the solvency of Social Security. There are limits to the ability of raising taxes on the rich that will be hard to resolve.

Anyway, Republicans suck, in case you were wondering.