Food prices, inflation, and the economy

We have been recently experiencing a rise in everyday prices due to the effects of reopening, causing a spike in demand.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/consumer-prices-rising-cpi-heres-whats-increasing-the-most-and-why/

When will prices and inflation drop and stable at a reasonable level?

@enkasongwriter 

I have really noticed rising prices also.  Almost sticker shock rises.  
Food insecurity is going to be a bigger thing, especially with the natural disasters and climate difficulties like fire, drought and heat on the west coast and hurricane and flooding on the east and gulf coast.

This doesn’t  count the difficulty in replacing home electronics like washing machines and dishwashers.  

Also, if you are in a hurricane prone area or flooding area, you really need to be prepared for hurricane season.  Materials and resources may not be around when you would normally expect them in order to prepare.

Is the rise in food prices and inflation part of the great unraveling?

I have been wonderinf a lot about this too. Specifically the state of the economy and how it will affect the midterm elections. The stick market AND greater economy seems to be in a massive bubble. If this bubble pops and the markets correct amd there is some sort of crash and correction (much needed I think) there will be temporary pain for a lot of retail investors as well as companies. The question then is: Will Biden be blamed for this? I already hear conservative economists squawking about how all of the recent stimulus is going to cause a stock market crash. I worry that if the markets do crash this year that they do not recover in time for the midterm elections. Contrary to what a lot of people think, a market crash would hurt a great deal of people..not just corporations. How would this reverberate through society economically and then politically? 

@lucieshelly When I hear conservative economists, I mostly tune them out. They're usually adherents of discredited economic theories like trickle down. They're mostly responsible for the mess we are in, yet people still listen to them because they don't understand micro- and macroeconomics. 

Posted by: @pamp When I hear conservative economists, I mostly tune them out. They're usually adherents of discredited economic theories like trickle down. 

@pamp, your apt reference to "trickle down economics"  triggered a memory for me. 

Trickle-down economics, a concept that began in the 1970's was, as you wrote, debunked, but it is a lie that is still more alive today than ever. 

They claimed money that goes to the top of the economy will trickle down to the bottom. Put another way, give tax breaks to the very rich and they will create jobs with it and revitalize the economy. Not true.  It turns out that to revitalize an economy, it is better to aim the money to the middle and lower income people, not the so-called "job creators." 

In the 1970's I worked on a federally funded research study where we tested the theory. The feds were much more progressive back then (remember Jimmy Carter?) and they wanted to know how to use government money to economically revitalize a region of the country, so they funded us to study it. 

We tested it by going to regions round the country where big money was pouring into the area. We interviewed people at all levels of the economy and we used Harvard and M.I.T. economists to  help us analyze quantitatively where the money ended up. My job was to interview leaders at various levels to hear their stories. We spoke to judges, mayors, civic leaders like the NAACP, local hispanic leaders, and prominent businesses. 

I think you know what we found. When a large amount of money came to an area, it did not trickle down to rest of the population in any meaningful way.

One of the sites I visited was Midland Texas, which had had an oil boom. It's where former First Lady Laura Bush grew up.  I was young and loved to travel, so it was odd that when I went to Midland, I found it to be an utterly depressing place. The countryside seemed sad and depressed. The wealthy areas seemed flat and soulless.  And no, the oil money did not trickle down to the working class or lower middle class or even the middle-class in Midland, or anywhere our study went. 

A visual of the place, which is a perfect symbol of the energy of it: As you approached this little city from a distance, it was quite rural and a lot of open country, then suddenly you come upon a concentration of sky scrapers.  It looked like a fake movie set.  At night this high rise office city became a ghost town.  It was a soulless place.  Workers came from the outside. One of the most unpleasant experiences of that three-week trip was interviewing an ignorant bigoted county judge. Hopefully the region has improved since then.

@jeanne-mayell Wow, that is fascinating! 

I've seen my local grocery stores empty and out of food hence food prices have increased tremendously especially the meat. I keep dreaming of my kiddos being hungry and starving for food. I keep dreaming of the dollar depreciating around Sept or October and I keep dreaming about someone telling me to prepare for the worst to stock up on food. I'm not sure if I'm just dreaming this because I'm scared of not having food for my kids and family or what. However, yes food and gas prices have increased a lot within this past months.