The bill for the COVID lockdowns, and the War — by which I mean of course the Biden regime's scorched-but-never-drilled-into-earth assault on energy production — and all the barrels of sewing machine oil for the government printing presses, is coming due. 

The bill states, among other things, that there has been and will be an 8.5% surcharge (basically a tax) on the cost of your basket of goods this year over last. 

But that's only if you are an "average" American.  If you are a low-income person who spends a greater-than-average share of your paycheck on food, then the 20% rise in the cost of beef is going to hit you harder.  If you are a construction worker, a plumber, or a waiter who has refused the seduction of generous government unemployment benefits and must commute 50 to 100 miles daily for work, then the almost 50% increase in gasoline prices and 35% increase for pre-owned cars is going to hit you harder than "average."

For many Americans of the sort that Democrats used to proclaim the loudest that they cared about, that 8.5% figure translates closer to 17%.  It means life savings collapsing to dust.  It means deciding whether to eat or to heat — to work and build for a better future for their families or accept dead-end welfare dependency. 

It means misery not seen in America for 40 years.

Remember that next time Jen Psaki or anyone else tries to gaslight you about how mild, or even beneficial, this "transitory" inflation is. 

Just in case you haven't noticed, Democrats are in charge.  Democrat policies rule and reign, from Los Angeles to Sacramento to D.C.  And Democrats shut down the production of everything except make-believe dollars for the past two years. 

Under the pretext of saving us all from a dread medieval plague whose actual survival rate exceeds 99% and whose average victim is 83 years old, they shut down the working economy and the schools and traumatized our children.  Under the pretext of "stimulating the economy" (well, the D.C. Swamp economy, anyway, although they never told us), they have kept the virtual printing presses working overtime under the pseudo-sophisticated covers of "Quantitative Easing" and "Infrastructure," exemplified by bills like the "American Rescue Plan" (price tag: $1.9 million times one million).  And under the pretext of "saving the planet" (or at least their own exclusive Malibu estates), they are doing everything they can to suppress the production, transportation, and refinement of fossil fuels, even though these are a hundred times more renewable than the fraudulently named "renewables."

The three most significant drivers of the malaise are energy, employment, and the money supply.  Suppress the first two while opening the floodgates on the third, and what do you expect?

The U.S. inflation rate is 8.5%, a 40-year high.

Sweden's is 4.5%.  Sweden didn't lock down over COVID.

But that's all boring, dismal-science economics, right?  We've got more fun fish to fry, like how many kids can we groom to have sex with adults before or after we convince them to mutilate their genitals and other reproductive biological characteristics, ensuring that, beyond even the psychological and spiritual carnage, the next generation will be unable to replace itself even if it wanted to.

Did I say Democrats?  What possible relevance could that word have here?

Howard Hyde is, among other things, the volunteer president of the Southern California Republican Women and Men, an independent club established in 1935.

Image: Pixabay.