Why Prices Are Soaring
It’s not wages. It’s late-stage capitalism.
In much of the Western-dominated world, prices are soaring while wages creep up slowly. They call it a cost-of-living crisis. Poverty and homelessness follow rising prices, which are usually called inflation. What is causing these increases, and what can we do about it?
Start with this: where can people afford to live? According to the White House web site, shelter costs, meaning rent or home purchase prices, are up 7.8% in the last year. Since those increases are based on already inflated prices, they are pricing more and more people out of shelter.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that a house which sold for $100,000 in 1967 would cost $1,033,540 now. That is a 933% increase in 56 years. An apartment that rented for $250 in 1974, when I moved to San Francisco, goes for about $3000 a month now. The research firm Credit Karma says rents nationwide rose 24%.from 2021 to 2022.
It also costs much more to eat now. In the US, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates the price of food eaten at home costs 5.8% more this year, and food eaten away from home costs 7.1% more than in 2022.
This is on top of a 2022 increase in food prices of 9.9 percent, according to USDA. Those numbers seem low to me. When a large pizza at a chain store costs $35 and a…
