WHAT!!!

  The quadrennial quest to answer Who? has become a fool’s errand.  Democrat or Republican, we wind up with a president who muddles us through some of the people's business, but assures that Wall Street, our financial and corporate elites, and the rich make out like bandits.  

     Perhaps you notice that the wealth gap is widening dramatically.  Your evidence will be the financial squeeze evident in your own daily life these days.  Inflationary trends, despite now receding some, amount to you making less because things cost more.  For myself, I am become aware that I am driving my last new car, now closer to its last legs than spanking new. I’ll be alright; I’m 76; it might get me to the end.  Economics has it that prices are ‘sticky downward’:  They go up quick and come down slow, . . . and don’t really ever come all the way back down.

A vague thought about inflation: Inflation is rising prices. . . by definition. Who raises the price? Like, in other discussions on the subject, you might hear how labor, say, creates inflationary pressures by demanding higher wages, more benefits, or better working conditions (i.e., not being required to bust as much ass per hour). So labor is to be blamed, but who raises the price?. Or, gasoline prices go up because those fuckin’ Arabs have raised the price for a barrel of Arabian light crude. But does that fuckin’ Texan continue to sell at the old price in solidarity with his American brethren? Sure thing, count on it. I should be enough gracious here to note that speaking fuckin’ this and fuckin’ that about actual folks is not making reference to Everyday Abdul or to Grasshopper Slim who runs the drill rig out there in West Texas. No, in the Middle East, we might be talking about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud who killed an American journalist, cut him to pieces so as to bag him up and get him out of someone else’s embassy. No, in West Texas, or maybe as likely someplace like New York City, we might be talking about that fat cat who is just charging ‘what the market will bear.’ Who raises the price?