Politics & the Economics of Demand Confound Hoosiers

Supply has been down since there was a quarantine. Even recently released from prison me knows that. People are complaining. I even get a little sticker shock looking into restaurants. So I had a little email exchange I want to share. 

KH says in reply to the Anderson Herald-Bulletin's From firecrackers to lumber, shortages taking toll:

 It’s interesting how headlines can distort the perception of the story. We know from j studies that most people will only read the headline and maybe the first few paragraphs. 

If we do that in this case, we don’t learn that the supply chain issues are caused by industries affected by the pandemic coming back online, the ship stuck in the Suez canal affecting 12% of world trade, and lumber price increases due to a massive spike in home Reno projects. It also doesn’t mention it will all return to normal soon. 

They’d just blame the Democrats. 

Saw the same memes about the price of gas last month when the pipeline feeding half the east coast was shut down by a Russian crime syndicate. They blamed Biden instead of our lack of infrastructure, or Trump’s erosion of our legal and intelligence organizations. 

Maybe a plutocracy?

My eldest nephew blamed President Biden for high rents. Maybe it is a difference in being educated in the Seventies and being educated in the Nineties. I'm beginning to think the smart phone and the internet were invented to make us dumber. 

Twenty years ago I had a friend who was a stockbroker and an uber-Republican who saw nothing wrong with America off-loading its manufacturing to Third World countries. It was the Democrats who argued against making it profitable to send American jobs overseas. Then - as with Trump - the white working class voted for the Republicans. The Republicans were working with spreadsheets and no concept of history. I have no clue what the white male electorate were working with in casting their votes.