If you are old enough to remember the ’70s, and I am sure a few of you are, you probably recall with varying degrees of fondness things like Saturday Night Fever, Star Wars, velour shirts and bullet-proof polyester, blacklight posters, and patchouli oil. And a maybe few cool cars. What you probably do not remember with any degree of nostalgia are disco, gas lines, and the high cost of everything except oxygen and belly-button lint.
Well disco, and to a certain degree Star Wars, is dead. There are a few patchouli true believers out there (one runs the cash register at my local filling station), and I am not sure if polyester is making a comeback, but judging by Megan Fox’s review of the VMA awards, it may be time to give it a second look. Bring on the leisure suits, Larry!
However, while gas lines may be in the future, high prices are here now. They are squatting over us like, to steal a phrase out of context from Nietzsche, a “catastrophic spider.” Or is that the Democratic Party?
In fact, while the cost of gas and items purchased in brick-and-mortar stores continue to slip the surly bonds of earth, online purchases are naturally seeing a hike in prices as well. If you can order it from your tablet, laptop, or smartphone, it is costing more than it did a year ago. That includes clothes, pet products, your vitamins, and furniture. This may have caught many people on the hop since they figured that online orders have a lower overhead. But production and shipping costs are keeping pace with the times.
You would think that with all the uncertainty that has become part and parcel of the 21st century and the skyrocketing costs of life in general, the Donkey Party would take a few minutes from reposting photos from the Met Gala to contemplate the struggles of the common man. But alas, that is not the case. But you already knew that. And you already knew that when it comes to taxes, a Donkey Double-Down is inevitable.
Such was the case earlier this week in Congress, when GOP members of the Ways and Means Committee, Kevin Hern and Lloyd Smucker, tried to introduce bills as part of the markup for the $3.5 trillion budget abomination. The bills had a simple goal: Hold off any tax hikes until the economy resembles something akin to its pre-pandemic state. Said Hern of his bill: “It’s not hard to understand that this is the wrong time for Democrats to shove one of the largest tax increases in American history on the American people that have not regained their strength from the brutal blow of COVID-19.”
“Inflation is a tax on all Americans and it hurts working-class Americans the most.,” he added. Hern hoped to at least hold off on any tax hikes until the annual rate of inflation dropped below 2.5% for 12 months in a row. Smucker’s bill would have delayed the increases until the national unemployment rate fell below the pre-pandemic levels for six months. Keep in mind, these men were not necessarily trying to deny the Dems their cash-grab. They just wanted to wait until the nation was in a better position to deal with them. And, of course, Democrats on the committee blocked both bills. This may give them a “tax the rich” warm fuzzy, but of course it results in higher rates of inflation for you and me.
Apparently, all of that empathy and goodwill at the Met got thrown out with the empty Chardonnay bottles.
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