Inflation was a defining issue in the presidential election. Here’s how climate change is making everything more expensive.
[Ed. Note: Yeah… ok.]
from Grist
Angela Bishop has been struggling with what she describes as “the cost of everything lately.” Groceries are one stressor, although she gets some reprieve from the free school lunches her four kids receive. Still, a few years of the stubbornly high cost of gas, utilities, and clothing have been pain points.
“We’ve just seen the prices before our eyes just skyrocket,” said Bishop, who is 39. She moved her family to Richmond, Virginia, from California a few years ago to stop “living paycheck to paycheck,” but things have been so difficult lately she’s worried it won’t be long before they are once again barely getting by.
As Americans begin preparing their holiday favorites through the end of the year, inflation at the supermarket has eased to the point where at least one item is cheaper than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic: tomatoes. A pound of tomatoes averages $1.98 nationwide and is 2.8% cheaper than in March of 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks inflation. Still, everything else in the store (out of more than 100 closely-tracked and seasonally-adjusted food items) is more expensive. On average food purchased for consumption at home is 25.5% more expensive than when the pandemic broke out – outpacing overall inflation of 22.2% in the same time period. 
Chipotle said it’s raising its menu prices by 2%, a rare direct admission about the impact that ongoing price increases in the economy are having on its finances.
OK OK, arguing that inflation can have positive side-effects is a lot harder today than a month ago. But it has led to one of the biggest declines in global indebtedness in history — possibly the biggest?
With 2025 just a few weeks away, Walmart’s top executive expects food price inflation won’t budge from around its current level at the start of the new year — instead of ticking down, as consumers have hoped.
Even as the rate of inflation subsided in 2023, the amount of stress it was causing in the U.S. population actually ticked up—indicating that researchers need to pay more attention to how people are affected by rising prices for food, fuel, housing, and other basic needs over time.
Fifty years ago, the Minneapolis Tribune reported a silver lining in an otherwise gloomy economic climate.
The Fed looks on track to cut interest rates again when its leaders meet in two weeks. But after that, it’s anybody’s guess how much easing will come in 2025 given the latest inflation trends.