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Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Thursday March 10th 2022.

I'm John Poghurtz the editor of commentary magazine inviting you to go to commentary.org slash live podcast to learn about our April 6th live podcast in Palm Beach, Florida.

You got three different ways to attend. You can just come to the podcast. You can come to a meet and greet with us before the podcast.

Or you can come have reserved seating and join us at a VIP dinner after the podcast. You can look up these three tiers of attendance at commentary.org slash live podcast and we hope to see you there.

If you've already purchased a ticket and would like to upgrade to these new levels, we will be in touch with you by email to let you know with me as always.

And in Palm Beach on April 6th are and will be executive editor, a greenwald high a John senior writer, Christine Rosen, high Christine, and associate editor Noah Rothman, high Noah, hi, John.

So the inflation numbers for February are out and they are really, really bad. They are incredibly bad. We have the fastest pace again of inflation in 40 years every month now.

We achieve a new high level of fastest pace of inflation with the report monthly report of inflation stats were up almost a percentage point point 8% month over month and almost 8% for the year.

And boy, this is bad.

We were discussing just before we came on the air. You know, Christine went and filled up her tank for $57. I had the same experience the other day filling up my tank for 50 and I was only half empty or something.

So everybody in America is going through this and I was just saying that you know of all the inflationary pressures that we face in the United States that are unprecedented gas price increases and gas spikes are the only ones that are familiar to people that is to say like we have experienced 10 times since the worst

of the 80s moments of which the 70 late 70s early 80s moments of which the you know oil prices have spiked you know in 2012, for example, with Barack Obama getting reelected at the end of the year gas prices were quite startlingly high.

And so we looked it up. It was about $3.50 a gallon on election day and that was that number was declining. It had risen as high as about $4 at some point during 2012. So I would say the American consumer who was not you know 22 or 23 years old has a built in understanding that in general

prices fluctuate and that what goes up can go down and can go vertiginously down you know there was a point a couple years ago where you know we were buying gas for $1.50 you know so I don't know that that is going to panic people and or or that that is the one thing that people sort of understand it's all everything else that is freakish it is it is seeing food prices rise the way food prices are rising

or in concomitant ways food prices rising because the amount of food you buy with the same dollar is less if you buy you know you buy bread there's too few too few fewer slices of bread in your in your slice bread you know or something like that that that quantities are going down for the same price which is effectively a you know a significant price increase and rent rent

is rising everywhere and and stuff like and so all of that this is where it really starts getting freakish for people that's that's what's new that's what that's what we haven't seen since inflation was broken in the early 1980s by Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker so you know it's interesting because the Biden administration has been doubling tripling down on this message which we're going to go into pretty heavily

that the inflation problem is due to Putin and Putin's war and I think that the weirdness of this as I say is that this is the one area about which the American people might be inclined to not panic about gas prices having been through generations before so they're attempt to attribute

economic hardships facing American consumers at this moment to this you know exogenous circumstance I think not only are not true because we'll get into that but also miss the point and miss what it is that people are actually experiencing from inflation it's not it's not so much by the way the gas as it is the thing that the gas goes in right

because I'm not just talking about food prices I mean we have automobile prices going up 30 to 34% or something like that over the course of the last year and a half

that's so that's actually the point is the cumulative impact of inflation has been experienced by Americans for many many months now people been talking about it people been complaining about it I mean since the summer in particular with food prices gas prices in there too but what I think has been really obnoxious to the bottom of the

administration is the constant messaging which has been stopped complaining this isn't our fault there's nothing we can do first it was the supply chain because of COVID that that now it's the Russians and those excuses are understandable from a political standpoint but they have fallen on deaf ears for most Americans most Americans like what's your plan to get us out of this that's what we're not hearing from this administration and that's I think why if you look at the polls and even Republicans are like we're happy to pay more gas prices if it means defending you craze and you're not going to be able to do that.

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