Whatchamacolumn: Discussion of inflation requires a few actual facts
Campaign sound bites often ignore inconvenient facts, and hyperbole dominates political debate. In a time when information searches are supercharged by artificial intelligence, it’s still too common for people to accept and pass along politicians’ self-serving propaganda.
Here, for example, is what one presidential candidate said Thursday on a national news network:
“I think we have the worst inflation in the history of our country, and it’s destroying people. Where people have to pay twice and three times more than they were paying for something one year ago, two years ago.”
Just as factual reference: While recent-year inflation was the highest in 40-plus years, America experienced double-digit inflation — ranging from 10 to 23% — in 1916-20, 1931-32, 1941-42, 1946-47, 1974-75 and, lastly, 1979-81. Annual inflation rates were 4 to 5% from 1982 to 1991, then settled into a long run of mostly 2 to 3%.
Inflation averaged 4.7% in 2021 and 8% in 2022 due to what experts call a “complex set of factors.” The rate dropped to 3.4% in 2023 and, in June 2024, was 3%. Not exactly the worst in history, but nonetheless politically problematic.
Last year, inflation factors were analyzed by Ben Bernanke, former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Olivier Blanchard, professor emeritus of economics at MIT and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Their findings, as reported in a summary written by Lawrence Leith for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:
“Energy price shocks were the primary cause of the high inflation rates from late 2021 to the middle of 2022 … The combined effects of increased demand for durables and shortages caused by supply-chain disruptions were the main source of inflation in the second quarter of 2021. Both the direct and indirect effects of those supply-chain problems remained substantial through the end of 2022 … (Since early 2021) the high vacancy-to-unemployment ratio became an increasingly important factor in the high inflation rates.”
Complex? You bet. But basic supply-and-demand forces are more straight-forward. As the pandemic eased, long-repressed demand for goods exploded while supply was limited by major disruption in the global supply chain. Rising demand, combined with reduced supply, is a classic cause of inflation.
Voters can look beyond the sound bites to a broad array of independent fact-checking sources. We all would be better informed about important issues if we spent as much time on these websites as we do watching FOX, CNN and their various media brethren.
Among the most prominent fact-checking website are PolitiFact.com, FactCheck.org and Snopes.com. The Washington Post publishes an extensive fact-checker, as do Duck Reporters’ Lab and NPR.
Politician claims are a primary target for much fact-checking, but threats of information trickery extend well beyond the candidates. You can study up on media bias and deceptive news practices at MediaBiasFactcheck.com, and learn more about false and misleading scientific claims at SciCheck.
It’s going to be a wild 100-plus-day ride to Nov. 5. Here’s hoping we all reach the polls with enough facts to justify our opinions.
Jeb Bladine can be reached at jbladine@newsregister.com or 503-687-1223.
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