Economics professor Teresa Ghilarducci over the weekend told us peons how to weather inflation in a Bloomberg article entitled “Inflation Stings Most If You Earn Less Than $300K. Here’s How to Deal.” First of all, about 98 percent of the population earn less than $300,000 per year, so this rich elitist is telling the vast majority of Americans how to economize while she continues living the good life! Besides being tone-deaf, her comments are supercilious and ignorant.
First, she admonishes us to budget. We need to decide how much money we have coming in, decide what is needed to pay the bills, and then budget what we can for food, gasoline, medicine, eating out and other expenses. What a novel idea! I’m sure not one single one of the 98% of Americans earning less than $300,000 a year ever thought of such a thing! Pay your bills, see what is left, and divide it up for food, gas, clothes, medicine? What a great idea! Thank you, professor Ghilarducci, for educating us on how to survive on what we have as if we haven’t been doing that for the entirety of our lives!
Next, she advises us to sell our car/cars and take the bus. Well, there are three major problems here. If everyone is selling his/her car in order to start taking the bus, who is going to be buying all of these cars? Certainly not those making more than $300,000 a year! They wouldn’t be caught dead in our Chevys and Fords and Hondas! Besides, those elites all own electric cars and we peons have those gas powered non-green energy things that they want to see destroyed. So, selling our cars is going to be a problem since there will be no buyers. Secondly, in order to take the bus, we must live in a metropolitan area large enough to have good bus service to all neighborhoods. And if that is the case, we probably then run the risk of being beaten up, raped, or robbed on our way to wherever we are going. And finally, middle America is dotted with small towns in vast rural areas where no buses (other than school buses) travel. Taking the bus is not a viable choice, professor!
Ghilarducci then points out that the cost of vegetables has risen much less than the cost of meat, fish, and eggs. So, a great budget booster is to become a Vegan! Don’t eat meat! Eat lentils! Lentils with mashed potatoes and gravy, lentils with spaghetti, lentils on a bun with mustard and onions. . . just think of the possibilities!
Another way she suggest to cut costs in order to weather inflation is to avoid spending so much money on your pets. She especially advises not to buy medicine for them since it costs so much, giving the example of chemotherapy for a pet costing as much as $10,000. Veterinarians say that chemotherapy is rarely used on pets, and certainly few of us making less than $300,000 per year would be able to afford that, but the sheer callousness of suggesting we cease providing medicine for sick or arthritic pets that we love seems beyond the pale.
Her last point is that nobody said that inflation would be fun. Well, that is true, but millions of us have said that inflation didn’t have to happen at all had her buddies not screwed things up so mightily!
But she gives us hope! Professor Ghilarducci, who is no doubt among the $300,000 earners as well as a Democrat, ends by telling us that all of this struggling with making ends meet is actually good for us. “Try to be as flexible and creative as possible,” she cheerfully admonishes. “Scientists tell us our brain plasticity will improve by trying novel things. There’s an advantage to mixing up what you consume to cope with unusual price spikes: You become more resilient as you create a locus of control and interrogate your habits.”
So, our eating lentils while she eats steak will make us smarter? That’s good. Because then we will all know enough to vote for Republicans in November and not for the Democrats who put us in this mess!