Daily Verse | Hebrews 2:14-15
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
Wednesday’s Reading: Hebrews 4-5
Happy Wednesday my friends.
As we’re all getting ready for the Christmas holidays, I’m wondering if you’ve noticed the prices of consumer products and necessities such as food, gas and housing? We certainly have in our home.
That’s a photo my wife took yesterday as she was food shopping. Almost $5 for a dozen eggs! Seems extreme yet … there it is.
It wasn’t that long ago they were less than a buck a dozen. The increased price includes increased gas prices for transporting the eggs, increased prices for chicken feed and electricity and taxes on the place that produces them, and the increased profit that the store tries to make selling them to you so they can pay the increased costs to run their place, too.
The dollar had an average inflation rate of 7.11% in the last 12 months. A 2021 dollar would buy about $1.10 worth of products in 2022 or, more simply, a 2022 dollar only buys 90% of what it bought a year ago.
Between 2021 and 2022:
- Gas prices increased from $2.33 per gallon to $3.85
- Bread prices increased from $1.55 per loaf to $1.85
- Milk prices increased from $3.11 per gallon to $4.19
- Egg prices increased from $1.47 per carton to $3.59
- Chicken prices increased from $1.60 per per 1 lb of whole chicken to $1.84
- Electricity prices increased from $0.14 per KwH to $0.16
CNBC reported that inflation jumped by 8.2% in September 2022 over prices a year earlier.
Food prices have been among the largest contributing categories to inflation in recent months.
The “food at home” index — or grocery prices — jumped 13% in September versus the same time a year ago. That’s a slight decline from 13.5% in August, which was the largest 12-month increase in over 40 years, since March 1979.
Within that category, certain items have seen prices rise sharply over the past year, such as butter and margarine (up 32.2%), eggs (30.5%) and flour (24.2%).
It’s obviously not just food. Services are more expensive, too. We’ve been thinking about building out some unfinished space in our home and are talking to the same contractor we approached about the work five years ago (but didn’t do for a variety of reasons). His new estimate is 60 percent higher than it was five years ago.
How about regular services like getting your teeth cleaned? Here’s a couple of photos I’ve taken at the dentist and at a clock repair shop in the last three months.
Yeah, when everything is more expensive, you sometimes have to choose who gets paid. The dentist is telling his clients that he’s standing at the front of the line.
Sticker shock on batteries, too.
Unfortunately, all reporting on inflation tells me that higher prices are going to be with us for a very long time—years, not months. I pin this all on the politicians who locked down our country (and the rest of the world) during the Chinese Lung Pox terror attack and then deliberately unleashed trillions of unnecessary dollars into the economy.
Our ruling elites love their centralized planning more than they care about us plebes. The higher prices are going to hurt the middle class, because we’re the largest segment of the population and we bear the brunt of the government’s wrecking ball. Unfortunately, though, it’s going to be especially tough on the poor, who really can’t afford higher gas, energy and food costs.
It’s maddening.