Food prices have risen along with inflation. | stock photo
Food prices have risen along with inflation. | stock photo
Global food prices increased 4.8% from April to May, putting a big strain on Iowans who struggle to make ends meet, a Clarke University expert said.
Loren Rice, a professor of accounting and business at Clarke University in Dubuque, told the Telegraph Herald that it’s clear the nation is experiencing its steepest inflation for the past 40 years with the people on the margins feeling its effects the most.
“Their food bill has gone up by a lot. And for people who are just trying to buy their groceries, that is becoming harder,” he told the newspaper.
Rice said that while the last time inflation soared mainly due to soaring oil prices, this one is a byproduct of government spending causing the dollar’s value to drop and inflation to rise, the Telegraph Herald reported.
Prices of groceries, gas and housing are among the necessities that have steeply inclined in cost over the past few months, the newspaper said.
“If you have to buy, it is not easy right now. The competition is tough, and there aren’t many choices,” Deb Jenny, a broker with Platteville (Wis.) Realty, told the Telegraph Herald.
Iowans are getting stuck with rental housing as they can’t find a home in their price range or just get outbid, she told the newspaper.
Former Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers warned the recent economic stimulus passed by the Biden administration will likely “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation,” The Federalist reported.
A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 85% of Americans are “somewhat concerned” about inflation, with 45% of that group being “very concerned.” The poll also found that nearly half of respondents don’t trust Biden’s Federal Reserve to properly handle inflation, the New York Post said.
Rice points out the drastic changes that have occurred in the past months, saying the country had been wandering somewhere below 2% inflation every year for more than a decade. He said this year inflation will rise to 5% to 5.5%. During the last period of steep inflation in the 1970s and 1980s, prices rose between 12.5 and 15%, the Telegraph Herald said.
A Congressional Budget Office report predicted that if the current tax and spending laws don’t change by 2031, the U.S. national debt will reach 107% of the GDP, the highest level in U.S, history.
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