Tag Archives: Affordability

Reporting Only Half Of The Story

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On Tuesday, The Western Journal posted an article about the mainstream media’s reports on the impact of President Trump’s tariffs on America’s economy. The focus of the mainstream media is on how much the tariffs are costing the average American. If you are an average American, you might have noticed a little more money in your pocket at the end of the month–not less. The cost of the tariffs had been more than made up for by the lowering of the gasoline prices. If we could just finish getting other energy prices down, we would have it made.

The article reports:

Media outlets were quick to glom onto a study that found President Donald Trump’s tariffs resulted in a $1,000 increase in costs to the average American household.

However, they did not couple it with the savings Americans are experiencing overall, thanks to Trump’s economic policies, which more than offset the price of tariffs.

The Tax Foundation, which leans conservative, does not like tariffs, as its latest study confirms. They came out strongly against Trump’s tariffs beginning in February 2025, shortly after he took office.

ABC News reported, “The research called Trump’s tariffs ‘the largest U.S. tax increase as a percent of GDP since 1993.’ It suggests the president’s signature economic policy is exacerbating cost of living concerns at a time when many households are grappling with persistently high prices.

“According to the research think tank Tax Foundation, the federal government collected $264 billion in total tariff revenues in 2025 — far short of the trillions regularly touted by the White House. The research also finds the tariffs will offset most of the economic benefits of the new tax cuts from Trump’s signature tax law that took effect this year,” the news outlet added.

The article concludes:

During a recent appearance on Megyn Kelly’s podcast, Vice President J.D. Vance said, “If you look at the numbers on affordability, they are starting to move in our direction.”

“There’s clear movement from where there was, say, four or five months ago,” he added.

Vance went on to note that due to inflation spiking to over 9 percent during the Biden administration, the average household lost about $3,000 in buying power.

Meanwhile, “The average American household … has gained about $1,200 during the Trump administration,” he said, arguing that this is why people are still feeling the pinch, because they are still $1,800 per year poorer than when Biden took office in 2021.

“We recognize there’s still a lot of work to do,” the vice president argued, but things are going in the right direction.

If you take tariffs in the context of everything else Trump and his team are doing economically, Americans are definitely better off than they were under Biden.

It would be nice if the mainstream media would report the WHOLE story.

It Will Be Interesting To See The Consequences Of This

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On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about one aspect of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s affordability agenda.

The article reports:

The “affordability” agenda of New York City’s new mayor apparently includes nurses getting paid more than $200,000 a year.

Mamdani showed up this week at an event to support striking members of the New York State Nurses Association, who are participating in what the union characterizes as “the largest nurse strike” in the history of New York City. The union says nearly 15,000 nurses have gone out at Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian, and Montefiore hospitals. Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), a frequent Mamdani wingman, also turned up; the Associated Press quoted Sanders as saying, “The people of this country are sick and tired of the greed in this health care industry.”

This is what happens when you elect someone with no business experience or knowledge of economics. The greed in the health care industry is not going to be helped by paying nurses $200,000 a year. In fact, paying nurses $200,000 a year is only going to make healthcare more expensive. If you want to bring down the cost of healthcare, the first think you need to do is get the government out of it. Other than licensing hospitals and health care workers, they need to stay away. It has been government subsides to health insurance companies and frivolous lawsuits that have caused to price of healthcare and health insurance to skyrocket.

According to health system tracker:

Since 2000, the price of medical care, including services provided as well as insurance, drugs, and medical equipment, has increased by 121.3%. In contrast, prices for all consumer goods and services rose by 86.1% in the same period. 

The article at The Washington Free Beacon concludes:

One irony is that if the nurses get what they are asking for, they eventually may qualify as “rich” for the purposes of New York taxing them to oblivion. The New York City top marginal income tax rate of 3.876 percent kicks in for married-filing-jointly filers at $90,000, and the New York State individual income tax rate for single filers in 2025 has an increase at the $215,400 a year mark to 6.85% from 6 percent. As Hammond drily observed, eventually nurses, or two-nurse households, might find themselves hit by New York’s millionaires tax. That is, if they don’t join some of the hospital trustees and decamp to lower-tax, lower-health-care-cost destinations, such as Florida.

New York City is going to have an interesting year.

Good News For American Consumers

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On Friday, The Post Millennial posted an article about a policy announced by the Trump administration limiting Credit Card interest to 10 percent for one year. Considering the damage that the four years of President Biden did to America’s economy and to the pocketbooks of Americans, this is a welcome move.

The article reports:

In what will surely be hailed as a massive gift to America, President Donald Trump announced Friday night that all credit card interest rates will be capped at 10% for one year. This would lift the burden for many Americans who have been struggling under the weight of high-interest rate debt.

In a post, he said “Please be informed that we will no longer let the American Public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%, and even more, which festered unimpeded during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration. AFFORDABILITY! Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%. Coincidentally, the January 20th date will coincide with the one year anniversary of the historic and very successful Trump Administration.”

The article notes:

Many credit cards have an interest rate of 20% or higher, making it difficult for American borrowers to get ahead of those balances. Just paying the minimum balance on high interest rate credit cards means the debt won’t be paid down for decades in some cases. Forbes states that the average credit card interest rate is 25.32%.

Trump has been under pressure to create a more affordable economy for Americans, and for most who carry debt and are paying off that debt to creditors monthly, a drop in the interest rate could make a huge differance. As the economy has tightened up, many Americans choose to make purchases on credit rather than with ready funds and many online creditors have sprung up to make that easier than ever.

This is good news for Americans.

Affordability: The Next Scam

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Author:  R. Alan Harrop, PH.D.  

The leftist Democrats are always looking for some issue, real or not, that they hope will appeal to voter’s emotions and return them to political power so that they can continue the destruction of America. Apparently, “affordability” will be used in the 2026 election year. As is the case in all these political scams, the reality is much different than the picture they want to present.

Look at the recent mayoral race in New York City. Not only was affordability the key issue of the Mandani campaign, but he actually presented no solutions that any sensible economist would say that could solve the problem. Why? Because the communist ideas of price controls, government owned retail stores, and taxing the rich have never worked and will never do so. Free market capitalism is the only system that has ever been shown to improve wealth and standard of living of the people. The troubling issue is why so many gullible people continue to buy into the communist lies.

As in most instances of Leftist propaganda, the youth and those looking to the government for solutions to their problems are the people most easily duped. This is the reason the Leftists have always wanted to lower the voting age and import more immigrants–they can place them on welfare programs and make them wards of the state.

One of the few advantages of getting older is the historical perspective one gains from having lived through various economic conditions. Take for instance mortgage rates. The current mortgage rate around 6% is blamed, in part, for the housing affordability problem. Freddie Mack Mortgage Market survey started tracking the 30-year mortgage rate in 1971, which at that time was 7.3%. The rate went as high as 18.5% in 1981. The average rate from 1971 to the present is 7.8%.  The lowest rates ever recorded were in 2021 at 2.8%; which quickly jumped to 8% during the Biden administration. The abnormally low mortgage rates of 2021 were an aberration not likely to be seen again. These low rates drove up housing prices and expectations, making homes affordable that many people could not have afforded previously.        

There is another issue that needs to be recognized, and that is the idea of living within (preferable slightly below your means). That does not appear to be a value that most young people live by these days. It used to be an American value to live within your income and to save for the future. This was facilitated by the system of paying with cash and or writing checks that required a person to spend no more than was in their checking account. The current digital/credit card systems hide the reality of what a person is spending. That is the reason credit card debt in the U.S. recently reached an all-time record high of $1.23 trillion!

Another contributing factor to overspending is family size. The average number of children per household in the 1950’s was 5.6 children, now it is less than 2. The result is that the youth of our country are used to living at a higher standard than we older people experienced as children. For example, my family rarely if ever went to restaurants, never owned a new car, and did not purchase a home until my parents were in their 40’s. Not unusual. Now, the youth of this country are used to having things the older generation never experienced. Drive by a local high school parking lot and observe the number of new or nearly new cars provided to the students by their parents.

The solution to the affordability issue is encouraging the youth to live within their means, accept the responsibility for their own financial wellbeing, to work hard, reduce or eliminate debt, and save for the future. The Trump economy, if not derailed by the leftist Democrats, will provide more opportunities for the youth to benefit from free enterprise than the failed communist ideology that is being pushed on them could ever do. We must get this message across to our children and grandchildren if we are to continue the economic success of the past 250 years. The idea of voting back in office the Democrats who are responsible for the highest inflation since the 1970’s to solve the problem is total lunacy.

It’s The Economy, Stupid!

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On Friday, The Daily Caller posted an article featuring some comments by Hugh Hewitt on how the Republicans need to frame the 2026 midterm elections. Currently, the Democrat word of the day is ‘affordability,’ but what the Democrats fail to realize is that for the working American, affordability is improving.

The article reports:

“I think if the message remains ‘Affordability decides elections,’ Republicans are going to like next November because most prices depend upon energy. And the energy production policies that you saw Secretary [Chris] Wright refer to there and Secretary Burgum over at Interior, are bringing the cost of oil and gas down,” Hewitt told host Bret Baier. “I was in Fort Worth this week. Gas costs $2.55 in Fort Worth this week. I was kind of surprised at how low it is. In the Beltway it’s about $3.50. And out in California, it’s almost $5, $5.50 on average, depends on where you live. But it’s going down.”

The national average for regular gasoline fell below $3 this week for the first time in four years, settling at $2.99 since Tuesday. Analysts say weaker demand, cheaper winter-blend fuel and lower crude prices near $60 a barrel are all driving the decline.

The article concludes:

“So we are bringing prices down. Way down. Beef is coming down now. We have done certain magic. Beef is coming down. We inherited horrible prices. We inherited, really, the worst, again, the worst inflation in history. We inherited that. When I came in, that was what he had, and we fixed inflation. And we fixed almost everything if you want to know the truth, including eight wars. We got one to go, including eight wars,” the president said.

After Democrats scored a string of prominent victories in November, Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair told Politico that Republicans would redirect their messaging toward affordability ahead of the midterms. Blair said Trump knows economic recoveries aren’t instantaneous but believes the underlying indicators are improving.

“The president is very keyed into what’s going on, and he recognizes, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there, and I think you’ll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living,” Blair told the outlet.

How many Americans had more money in their pockets to spend of Christmas this year?

About That Affordability Thing…

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Affordability is the new buzz word of the day. The attempt is being made to use it as a hammer to bludgeon President Trump. Interesting, since he hasn’t even been in office for a year yet.

On Tuesday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog reported:

Normally I wouldn’t do anything so facile as to blame inflation on a particular politician, but given that the Democrats are pinning their hopes on hanging the “affordability crisis” around President Trump’s neck, a little historical perspective is in order. Thus, from the Unleash Prosperity Hotline:

We went back to January 2020 when the pandemic started. We found that 13.5% of cumulative inflation (prices are 24% higher today) has happened under Trump, while 86.5 percent of cumulative inflation happened under Biden.

So the “affordability crisis” is the hangover effect of Bidenomics when the White House dumped some $4 trillion of helicopter money out the windows.

The article includes the following chart:

Obviously prices are still rising, but there are a few good things in the future economically–the price of gasoline at the pump is trending down–that impacts everyone and everything. The price of energy should come down in the near future as America increases its energy independence, although some states may not experience the downward turn due to excessive regulation. Most food prices are also stabilizing or moving downward.

Affordability is improving, but it is going to take a while. Two things that will help with the cost of housing are to lower the demand by removing the illegals and to lower the interest rates. Overall, I am optimistic about the future, but there will be a price paid at some point for the excesses of the Biden administration.