Is it me or are things getting pretty pricey out there?

Inflation. Now that’s a heck of a scary word. Though of course it brings about what everyone hates, such as gas prices going higher than Elon Musk’s SpaceX ships, its not as simple as we might all be thinking lately.

Obviously we all expected some form of a dip in the economy when the COVID began to roam around the streets and that is only natural considering the lockdowns, travel restrictions, and other mandates that would have either indirect or direct effects on the economy. For example, it is safe to say that COVID did of course hurt the price of airplane flights, which knocked their prices down considerably during the travel restrictions, and now, when we all got nice and cozy with those low prices, they began to rise once more, returning more or less to their prices pre-COVID.

Airplane tickets and things such as that are not what has been troubling the country lately. Those prices were more or less expected, at least by people with common sense, to go back to how they were before.

No sir, the pain that the entire nation is feeling is with something a lot more commonly and frequently used. Items such as groceries and meats, and perhaps most of all, gasoline are what is biting into the pockets of many Americans. According to Forbes Advisor, general foods rose 0.4% while beef by itself rose 1.7%. This may sound small but multiply this increase by every time you go to the grocery store with every food item! As for gasoline, hold on to yourselves there, it rose an alarming, 2.8%... in just a month.

I know what you’re thinking. “Dang, that Keystone XL Pipeline shouldn’t have been closed. Though it is not the only reason attributed to the raises in prices, it is of course one of the reasons, though many do think it’s the only thing affecting the prices. The pipeline, proposed by a company based in Canada, was turned down by President Obama in 2015, later being approved by President Trump in 2017 with the hopes of boosting the supply of oil, allowing prices to drop for most Americans, even if it was simply a little. In January, President Biden shutdown the pipeline for ecological reasons, which sent many people tumbling over the uncertainty of its effects.

A fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and president of the Transversal Consulting was reported on saying that, “Part of that is due to the fact that America is actually producing less oil now than it was before the pandemic.- we’re partially responsible for it by not producing so much.” This of course has many other worries for the near futures, many sources speculating that we have not reached the worst of the gas inflation if something is not done about it.

Not only the prices of oil themselves, but many stocks on gas and oil have been hurt by the prospect of a pipeline not being opened, as well as some issues with some current pipelines, for example the Colonial Pipeline in Texas.

Another factor from Biden’s mandates and policies that has contributed to the rise in prices over

all is the plan the Biden administration had set when they arrived in office. They focused quite a bit in putting money into the economy through stimulus checks, which did help many people, yet did not address many of the underlying issues the economy was facing, some through hindrances due to the pandemic but many others through poor policies.

USAToday has said that the accusations of the closing of the pipeline affecting the gas prices is not true and they have nothing to do with it, yeeeeet I find that hard to believe. It seems that the promise of more oil would help the price of the oil, as well as the undeniably low prices of gas during much of Trump’s term, excluding the COVID effects it had on it of course.

I do say, we have to be fair and not pin everything on the current office because it is true that there are large areas affected economically by the lessening of COVID restrictions, lockdowns, and the general sense of the pandemic becoming less severe as it was before. As we are seeing every day, more and more people are going out, eating out, flying, and buying more items than they were in the worst of the pandemic, ushering in an obviously and expected rise in prices for some items such as some foods and airline prices.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of areas of fault for the current administration as of gas prices and the inflation in general. We all wish for the amazing prices of the high 1s that we were paying for a little over a year ago, but much of that may not occur if the Biden administration continues to pretend there isn’t a problem to be addressed, something they are doing quite a lot recently, exhibit A: the border crisis. But that is another story for another day.

Let us know what you think! Do you think the closing of the pipeline was a mistake or not?

Do you think the Biden administration focused too much on putting money into the economy instead of fixing issues?