Groceries Today and Yesterday

Why the GOP economy doesn’t work

I was discussing salaries and costs and general economy with a co-worker today when she talked about how most men don’t understand how grocery prices work.

At first, I was incredulous because I always participated in shopping with my spouse. The more I thought about it, I realized that there were never a lot of men in the grocery store with me. I think this goes for politicians too. When was the last time you saw a Member of Congress in the local grocery store?

I decided to do a little research about how grocery prices have risen since that last bump. For my example, I selected a date close to the latest update to the US minimum wage. That wage was raised to its current level of $7.25 on July 24, 2009. I found a few newspaper ads from near that date in my home state of Texas. For comparison, I used an advertisement from Brookshires Grocery store from that date and this week. While there were a couple of items that were similar in price, a majority of the prices had risen, one by as much as 449%! I selected 25 random items from several different areas of the store.

Here’s the results of my search:

As you can see, a majority of prices have risen. Add the rise in the cost of utilities, housing, insurance, and on and on and it is no wonder that families are struggling.

Fortunately, the current administration seems to be backing a raise in the minimum wage to $15.00. However several studies indicate that the minimum wage should be higher. A study by the Center for Economic Policy and Research, an economic think tank in Washington, D.C., cited a wage of over $24 to keep pace with inflation.

As has been cited by many others including the Washington Post, the GOP Trickle Down theory promoted first by President Reagan in the 1980s does not work. Wages have remained mostly stagnant since Reagan’s era (although there has been a small increase in the minimum wage since the $3.35 rate in effect when Reagan was inaugurated).

But we have seen the tools that workers use to get wage increased quashed by the GOP. It started with the firing of 11,500 air traffic controllers in August 1981 by Reagan. His refusal to negotiate with PATCO, the union representing the employees, was the start of the end of good faith negotiations with unions by not only the government but by corporations as well. That firing also has led to an all-out assault on the reputation of unions that has alienated the very workers who would benefit from higher wages and better working conditions that the unions brought to the US in the “early days”.

I spoke with one of those striking air traffic controllers a few days ago. I didn’t know at the time that he had been a controller. All I knew was he supported the GOP and voted for Trump. When I heard that he had lost his job in 1981 at the hands of Reagan I was shocked. I mentioned at the time that I felt that move was the beginning of the end of the middle class in the US and he agreed with me.

With that in mind, I now wonder how the Democrats can fix the US economy. So many people who would benefit from higher wages, stronger unions, and a stable infrastructure believe the lies that the GOP has spread for the last 40 years.

Add to that the support for voter suppression from GOP voters under the guise of “election security” and you have a perfect storm of a GOP takeover of Congress in 2022.

The attacks on what is left of the middle class continue daily and even though this appears to be the dying gasps of the GOP theocracy, I fear that the damage they can do might push us into an autocratic government with no chance of survival for the working man (and woman).