Inflation Is Still Eating Your Paycheck and Both Parties Are Lying to You About It

The Political Spin Machine Is Working Overtime

Let me be straight with you. I am an equal opportunity basher on this program. We concern ourselves with one thing here, the truth. Not Republican truth. Not Democrat truth. Just the facts. And right now, the facts on inflation are being mangled by every politician with a microphone.

Here is where we actually stand. Inflation is running at 3.4%. Republicans are out there crowing that it peaked at 9% in 2022 under Biden, so things are better. And technically, yes, 3.4 is less than 9. But “less bad” is not the same as “good.” Prices are still going up. Your paycheck is still losing ground. And the compounding effect of six years of elevated inflation has done real, lasting damage to American household budgets.

Tariffs Are Not Helping

Here is something I want everyone to understand clearly. A number of everyday goods saw a 2.9 percentage point increase in inflation across a sample of 67 product categories. The reason? Tariffs. Full stop.

• Without the tariff policy in place, prices on many of those items would have actually declined
• This is not a political opinion, it is math
• You can argue the merits of tariff policy all you want, but the cost gets passed to consumers every single time

I am not here to tell you tariffs are inherently evil. There are arguments to be made for strategic trade policy. But do not let anyone tell you that tariffs do not affect what you pay at the register. They do.

Six Years of Damage Cannot Be Blamed on One Man

Here is where both parties go completely off base. Democrats want to act like the inflation problem is solved because the rate has come down from its peak. Republicans want to pin every penny of it on Joe Biden. Both are dishonest.

The reality is that six years of compounding inflation started with COVID-era money printing that happened under both administrations. Could you make an argument that Trump’s emergency spending was more justified than Biden’s subsequent packages? Maybe. I would not personally agree with it because the whole thing was a disaster, but the argument exists. What you cannot honestly do is pretend that one party caused this and the other is blameless.

• Trump-era COVID spending flooded the economy with printed money
• Biden’s spending packages poured fuel on an already burning fire
• The Federal Reserve was asleep at the wheel during both administrations

What This Means for Your Financial Life

This is the part that actually matters to you. Unless you have been getting significant raises consistently over the past several years, you are poorer in real terms than you were before COVID. That is not spin. That is arithmetic.

Here is the compounding problem most people feel but cannot articulate:

• Even if your wages went up somewhat, they almost certainly did not keep pace with cumulative inflation
• Every grocery trip, every utility bill, every insurance renewal reminds you of this
• That feeling of running on a hamster wheel and getting nowhere is not in your head, it is in your bank account

Technology is going to keep wage growth in check going forward. Productivity gains from automation are real, but they tend to benefit shareholders and executives far more than the average worker. I do not see wages suddenly taking off in a way that closes the gap inflation has opened.

What You Should Actually Do

The finger pointing from Washington is not going to fix your balance sheet. Here is how to think about protecting yourself:

• Review your actual purchasing power, not just your nominal salary, over the past four to six years
• Reassess your portfolio to ensure you have assets that can grow faster than inflation over time
• Avoid cash-heavy positions that are quietly being eroded by prices that are still rising, just more slowly
• Be skeptical of anyone telling you inflation is solved because the rate ticked down from a crisis peak

Voters are impatient and frustrated with inflation, and they should be. But frustration without a plan does not pay your bills. Get informed, get positioned, and stop waiting for politicians to fix something they helped break.