The Affordability Crisis: Hoax, Spin, or a Hard Economic Reality?

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Affordability. Is it a hoax or no hoax? Okay, this is the latest the latest survey that’s out. And again, want you to take all of these surveys. You always have to take them with a grain of salt. I took a look at how the questions were asked and it seems to be okay. But again, again, take these things with a grain of salt always.

Inflation looks to be sapping some of America’s holiday cheer as they head out to buy gifts this Christmas season. This is CNBC’s All America Economic Survey. The survey found the high cost of goods has emerged as a major factor affecting how much soppers spend and where they spend, suggesting that inflation of the past several years and the rise in import goods prices from tariffs are being felt at

the checkout counter survey of a thousand people nationwide margin of error plus or minus three found that the high cost of goods is the top reason Americans are spending less in a first for the survey. The main reason they are spending more they’re saying is because stuff is more expensive. Okay, the ones that are saying that they’re spending more. Okay, they’re spending more.

because items are more expensive. this survey echoes, this is CNBC survey, we’ve seen surveys from Fox, from New York, various different places, and they’re all coming out about the same. President continues to hammer, and he’s also got his people out there, the sycophants at

Fox News and Fox Business that are continuing to bang the drum that it’s some sort of hoax and everything is awesome and the economy is just fine. Very disappointed, quite frankly. Maria Bartiromo, she was on Hannity’s program, brought her on and she was making the point that, you know, well, the economy is doing really well and it’s just really not that bad and I don’t think that there’s any sort of affordability crisis.

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Then she also had Ro Khanna on her program. And she was right in this sense. She was pressing Ro Khanna, Democrat Lib from California. Again, he’s got some decent points from time to time. Again, his worldview is skewed through the lens of government, like many people on the left, in my opinion. But, know, re-oppressed him, rightfully so, on this time, was that…

You know, a lot of this happened during the Biden years. She’s not wrong. She’s not wrong. Prices haven’t come down. And again, we are told, and this is one of the great myths that are out there, is that prices cannot come down. Deflation is horrible. And you always get these people, know what? Deflation, that’s what happened during the Great Depression.

Can’t allow that to happen again. No, it’s okay. It’s okay if the items that you’re not, I’ve explained this before, everyday items, the bare necessity items, the things that people have to buy on a regular basis and they have no choice. Okay, what are these things? You have to eat. You have to put gas in your car and that has come down. Your housing costs.

your insurance costs, all of these things that you have to spend money on, utilities, you name it, you don’t have a choice, you do have a choice, and whether or not you’re gonna go out and buy yourself a new laptop, unless your laptop breaks the need for work. You follow here? Certain things you can put off, okay? Yeah, you can put off eating if you wanna do a little intermittent fasting, but you still have to buy food, okay? Have to have housing.

Okay, you don’t want to live on the streets. So these are the things that actually matter. And I’ve made this point, the idea that the prices for these things can’t come down, it’s going to be bad for the economy if they do come down is absurd. It’s absurd. It really is. You you want the prices of certain things to come down, you know, based upon a myriad of different reasons.

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You know, that you can have it. More competition. We don’t have that with these bare necessity items and we put ourselves in this position and this is why these things are high. So yes, yes, when it comes to those items, there is a bit of an affordability crisis. Now again, people are also complaining about, you know, my Barbie doll cost this last year, it’s that much more this year. Yeah, no one likes that. I don’t like that. I railed against that too. But really what

hits people upside the head are the bare necessity items. We’ve gotten to this point in time by quite frankly, just the way we handle monetary policy here in this country. They put this in a perspective for you. I want to go back again, George W. Bush’s presidency and

In 2000, in 2000, our debt was 55 % of GDP. It’s now at 121%. Get your arms around that.

I know it’s going to be 2026, but, you know, I can’t I was married in 2000. Very vivid memories. Very vivid memories that year. Yeah. Yankees beat the Mets in a World Series that year. Anyway, 55 percent of GDP, it’s now at one hundred and twenty one percent of GDP. It costs over a trillion dollars a year to service our debt. It’s gone.

from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden back to Trump.

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The trajectory hasn’t changed. When you print that much money, guess what? The value of your currency is going to drop. And unless wages are steamrolling ahead of that, you are going to be caught behind. Ron Paul put out an interesting statement this past weekend. God bless him. True national treasure.

Both Democrats and Republicans are looking in the wrong places for the cause and cure of the affordability crisis. It’s not simply that prices are too high, making the cost of living excessive. That is an effect for sure. But in order to change an effect, one must accurately diagnose the cause. By the way, he’s a doctor. The affordability crisis is caused by government spending.

way beyond its means to the point where it can never pay its debts. This is coupled with the Federal Reserve that enables this type of behavior by counterfeiting dollars and price fixing interest rates. The solution requires an honest assessment of the problem. Simply subsidizing everything with more government largesse is no answer to the cost of living problem. An increase in the cause will simply increase the effect. Prices will continue to rise. So point that Dan from

decades here on the program. I’ve tried to get across to people and unfortunately, you know, most Americans are like, la la la la la la la la Markowski talking Ron Paul’s talking. I’m not listening. I want more free government money. They actually believe that the government dumping more money, the government subsidizing something is going to make the price come down when the inverse is always the case again.

Take a look at three aspects, three things, whether education, housing, healthcare. Government subsidizes the crap out of those things and the prices have skyrocketed. It’s just that simple.

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Ron Paul goes on. What is not affordable is the constant depreciation of the dollar that results from showering more money and credit on special interests. And by deceiving the people into thinking that it’s beneficial, it’s really economic nonsense, allowing the government to add greater mischief with wage and price controls, financing the empire, and most of all, the steady deliberate debasement of the currency only pours more gasoline

on the inflation fire. It guarantees a serious correction that has already begun. I’ve been talking about this, Ron Paul’s been talking about Rand Paul, Tom Coburn used to talk about this as well. And it’s laid out right in front of everyone, right now.

Right now, everything, everything, not, a, said what’s gonna happen is happening.

And what are people clamoring for?

More?

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You’re looking to Washington DC, looking for more spending, that’s gonna solve the problem.

No way, no how.

It doesn’t work that way. I was happy to see, and I know I’ve been championing this gentleman’s cause for some time, Ron DeSantis is out and about, he’s pushing states to champion a balanced budget amendment. Again, constitutional amendment forcing Congress to actually do their job and balance

the budget. I made this suggestion many, moons ago when it came to this and the conversation comes up about paying taxes. I used to live in a very, very high tax state, the state of New York. The thing about spending money, this is for me. If I spend money on something, I work hard and I spend my hard earned dollars something.

I want to know that exactly I feel like I received value for what I spent. It was worth my while. I have money amount of taxes you pay in the state of New York, property taxes, state income taxes for what?

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For what? You know, live on Long Island, know, pothole every five feet, they don’t fix the roads. I mean, it’s just, it’s one disaster for everyone. So you’re spending money and you feel like you’re not getting any value. And that’s one thing. I don’t like being ripped off. I don’t know about you. I don’t like it. We talk about right now, you know, all the spending that government goes to, all the money we send to Washington, DC. Do you feel like, feel like you’re getting value?

You feel like you’re getting your money’s worth and what you’re spending in Washington DC when you see all the waste, all the money that’s thrown away, no accountability. You see the fraud that takes place. Medicare, Medicaid happens in Minnesota, happens here, happens there, everywhere. Money just flushed down the toilet.

I came up with this, again, every single time, every single time, this is how you approach a liberal when they talk about raising taxes. You wanna raise my taxes? Fine. Okay, why don’t we compromise? We’ll cut a deal. You wanna raise my taxes. You balance the budget.

You balance the budget. Balance the budget. We work to eliminate waste and fraud. You gotta bring back Doge. Gotta bring back Doge. And all of my additional tax dollars, these taxes that you are going to raise, that money has to be spent on lowering our debt. So we’re not gonna have any deficits because you’re gonna balance the budget.

So all additional tax revenues are going to be applied towards lowering our debt. Now what do you think that would do? If the United States all of a sudden had our proverbial come to Jesus moment when it comes to fiscal sanity and we start paying down our debt. Do you have any idea?

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what interest rates would collapse for, it’d be great. All of a sudden people are like, holy crap, the United States is actually gonna be fiscally sane?

You don’t need a Federal Reserve. It would take care of itself. Mortgage rates, adopt credit, everything would drop just by being responsible in the same way, in the same way that if you are responsible and if you have a FICA score in the 800s, guess what? Things are much better for you.

It’s the same concept, but.

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We’re not getting any of that. Not getting any of that. They threw Elon Musk out the door. We got banging back and forth when it comes to whether or not, and I still believe, and I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I do think that probably come maybe Thursday evening, Friday evening, late in the night.

they’ll pass some emergency extension of COVID era Biden healthcare subsidies. the extension that you’ve actually got Republicans signing off on three years worth of COVID five years ago. COVID, you know, enhanced tax credit bull crap for Obamacare to the tune of a half a trillion dollars.

Yeah, you got Josh Hawley signing off on that. You got Lisa Murkowski. What’s the other guy there from Alaska? got, and then what’s his name? Susan Collins. they’re signing off on this.

So that’s my prediction and guess what? We’re going further into debt. Again, it’s not, it’s really not a complex problem to solve. You just don’t have people in positions of power that are willing to do it. And each and every one of us, if we want to really change things here in this country, you have to champion

people that want to balance the budget, that want to do, to take these necessary steps. And you have to hold the people that accountable that are unwilling to do that, that want to continue to just print and print and print and spend because again, 30 years.

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30 years, the value of your dollar has dropped by 54%. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.