Prices increase as inflation reaches an 8-year high

Corn and inflation are rising at a breakneck speed. Corn is nearing the height it normally is at July 4 – knee-high. Inflation is nearing an eight-year high of 4 percent. Couple that with higher gas prices, meat increases, and one gets a bleak look into the future as the world digs out from pandemic chaos.

I almost forgot to mention the skyrocketing prices of homes that have hit Dodge County and the rest of the nation. Median home price increases are at 0.7 points, which equals a 6.2 percent record high, an increase for the last three months.

What does all this mean?

In a nutshell, it means that we’re paying 8 percent more for food, 9.8 percent for gas, and rent is expected to increase by 9.7 percent.

None of this is meant to paint a gloomy picture. However, all of us need to be aware of what’s really going on as we recover from the pandemic shutdowns that gripped this nation, this state, and our county.

Those who have been refusing to return to work will be hard hit if the job market tightens with the inflationary trend.

In most cases, whether we’re talking inflation or politics, what goes up, does eventually come down.

We’ve had inflationary woes before. I recall then-President Jimmy Carter’s four years in office when inflation was higher than the Minnesota Twins’ pitching staff ERA. It wasn’t fun, but we survived.

I also remember when a gallon of gas was 33-cents.

On a positive note, a Wisconsin judge ruled by issuing a temporary restraining order that the Biden Administration’s program that would have given farmers of color billions in debt relief. Four billion, in fact were in the balance.

This discrimination flies in the face of blind justice based on race.

“The Court recognized that the federal government’s plan to condition and allocate benefits on the basis of race raises grave constitutional concerns and threatens our clients with irreparable harm,” Rick Esenberg, president and general counsel with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which filed the lawsuit, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

As we near the beginning of summer on Sunday, June 20, we could be in for a wild couple of months.

FARMERS

He was a very inferior farmer when he first began, but a prolonged and unflinching assault upon his agricultural difficulties has had its effect at last and he is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.

Mark Twain