There is a bit of a kerfuffle going on right now over inflation.
Some say it is the only issue the country should be grappling with. Others say that the fear of inflation is overblown and not nearly as important as say climate change or voting rights. As prices rise and wages do not the public is becoming fearful of being able to make ends meet. When the public is fearful, the political party in power tends to be blamed for it.
Especially when the other party’s propaganda wing harps on it to the exclusion of pretty much all other news.
My personal favorite of the Faux News Factless Fatuousness is the $7.59 a gallon California gas station. Let’s take a look at that story. Don’t worry, that link doesn’t take you to Faux News, I have a greater respect for my readership than to pull a stunt like that. At any rate it turns out the $7.59 per gallon gas at exactly ONE gas station in the remote coastal town of Gorda comes from the fact that the station only receives one shipment every couple of weeks and pays the highest cost per gallon for gas delivery in the country and because, yeah, if you are nearing empty in that remote coastal town and the next gas station is at least two or three gallons away you’ll pay whatever you have to in order to buy a couple of gallons. The proprietor also reports that he rarely sells a full tankful which also forces him to have a higher price.
Economics 101. It’s called supply and demand.
Now yes we do have the highest cost of gas in the country as I have discussed before, but guess what? We here in liberal, blue, Democratic California have the highest wages in the country. You know those ads for Amazon where they tout how they pay a minimum of $15 per hour and then cut to a shot of cheering warehouse employees? That’s our minimum wage. I don’t see FedEx running ads showing their warehouse employees cheering their $7.25 per hour Tennessee minimum wage.
But let’s get back to inflation. Repugnicants want to harp on it because they see it as the issue that will get white, no college, women to flock to them in 2022.
Here’s the thing. They’re right.
Repugnicants have always been the winning party when they can get two things: their base to vote, and the undecideds to swing their way. Undecideds may be too bored to have an opinion, but they vote based on the one issue that people SHOULD be basing their vote on, their pocketbook. If a gallon of gas is double what it was four years ago, somebody has to pay for that rapid escalation. Especially when it’s somebody who is negotiating climate deals that will save the planet, but make gas even more expensive.
Leaving a habitable planet for your kids and grandkids is a nice concept, but putting food on the table right now is much more important to those folks.
So Democrats, if you want to keep your majority in Congress and maybe even make that majority solid enough to tell Senators Manchinnychinchin and Semolina to go fold it five ways and stick it where the sun don’t shine you might want to listen to the concerns of those white non college educated females.
And then you might want to weaponize what they tell you.
Play the Repugnicants’ game. They are always taking issues and surrounding them in a fog of unrepentant propaganda, how about you do the same? But here’s the thing, you can use the truth as a weapon.
Wow, what a concept.
The truth is that inflation is keyed by one product and one product alone. It’s the only product that all other products have to use in one way or another. When it’s price rises, all other prices rise to ameliorate that increase. And what product is that?
I’ll give you three guesses, but I think you’ll only need one.
Click Click Click the link below to find out what it is
The price of gasoline fuels inflation like no other product ever has or will. If it costs more to get your product to market, then that increase has to be passed along. Passing along a rise in costs is the very definition of inflation.
Joe Biden has to turn back into Joey B Shark, look the American public in the eye and say no president, Democrat or Repugnicant, has ever been responsible for the price of gas. The only people responsible for the price of gas are the oil producers, both companies and countries. If inflation is ripping your bank account to shreds it’s because of the greed of a few entities.
And then he needs to name them. And he should start with the worst offender of them all, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Their weight on the seesaw of world oil prices is like the fat kid on the playground and it’s the rest of us who end up dangling up in the air.
Let Mrs. White School of Hard Knocks know that if she wants the prices at the grocery store to go down then she has to tell Exxon, Shell, Union 76 et al that she’s not going to their stations to fill up the family van. Instead she’s going to go to the independent station a few blocks over. Yeah the kids won’t be able to get a Slurpee at the convenient convenience store attached to that name brand station, but it’s a way of putting the hurt on Big Oil.
Yes, that gas is coming from the same places that the brand name gas is coming from, but the gigantic difference is that oil companies don’t make as much money wholesaling to independents as they do selling to their branded stations. Plus oil companies don’t get that sweet sweet franchise cut they get from the branded stations.
By the way, do you know where the cheapest average gas price is? Anywhere there are numerous independent stations competing with branded stations. All the gas prices go down. Why do you think Big Oil wants Ed’s Gas and Service out of business?
Economics 101, the more competition the better the price to the public.
The thing is if you can tell that story Democrats, if you can get that message across, and especially if you can tie Repugnicants to Big Oil, OPEC, and the REAL cause of inflation you will have even “reliably red” districts turn first to purple and then to blue.
And then you can really get issues like climate change and voting rights and all of the progressive agenda that The Squad wants to see happen voted on. This country will be a better place not only for Mrs. White No College, but for all of us.
But if you don’t, then the laws of perception versus reality come in play. If the perception is that inflation is raging, and by the way prices are rising but only one percent more than average, then Democrats will be blamed for it because “well they’re in charge”. Change the perception. Make people understand that small “d” democratic government can only do so much when it comes to inflation, that the larger onus of fault falls on those who are raising their prices. Make the reality that we should be blaming those who intentionally cut back on oil production or arbitrarily raise the price on a barrel of crude because one of their wives needs a new yacht or because they see it as a way to leverage political power against Israel or any one of another dozen possible reasons.
As Don Draper famously said:
“If you don’t like what is being said, then change the conversation.”
And hopefully next year at this time the collective hive mind will say “What the hell was Critical Race Theory and why were so many people worried about it?”