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**NOVEMBER 10, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

The Price of Political Success

Will inflation subside in time for the 2022 midterms?

The only good news in today's inflation report
for October is that the
Fed is not overreacting to it. Life is not fair, and the spike in
consumer prices-for reasons that have nothing to do with Biden's
policies-is a blow to the Democrats.

Consumer prices are up 4.6 percent over a year ago, and almost a full
point in just a month; but in highly visible sectors such as retail
gasoline, they are up a lot more. Gas prices are up almost 50 percent
over a year ago, and with winter coming, home heating will be more
expensive, too.

Most of this is the result of long-term policy failures by Republicans
and other conservatives. The supply chain bottlenecks that are creating
spot shortages and raising prices across a range of products reflect a
brew of too much globalization, too much deregulation, and too little
public management of logistics as a coherent national system. All of
this, however, is hard to explain in a sound bite.

Even

**The New York Times** ran a front-page feature story

correctly flagging a national shortage of truck drivers as a key choke
point in the supply chain crisis, noting the long hours and lousy pay,
but without mentioning the words trucking deregulation or Teamsters
once. Back in the day, long-haul trucking was a good job and there were
no shortages of drivers.

By the same token, if we had gotten more serious about domestic
renewable energy much earlier, we would not be at the mercy of swings in
the global price of energy, magnified by the speculations of futures
markets.

The trouble is that people don't want subtle explanations of past
policy failures. They want prices to subside.

Biden has some leverage to make the ports work more smoothly in the near
term, but most of these fixes will take years, not months. And fully
funding Build Back Better will help pay to bring home supply chains
sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, we can be grateful for small favors, the most important
of which is the Fed's refusal to join the clamor for higher interest
rates, which would only make the situation worse by dousing a
still-fragile recovery.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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Polling: How Democrats Can Win Back the Working Class

A critical moment to raise support with ALL working-class voters BY
DEMOCRACY CORPS, EQUIS LABS & HIT STRATEGIES

Talking Tariffs and Carbon Emissions

A mechanism designed to induce countries to adopt green technologies
is fueling international resistance instead. BY CONNOR BULGRIN

How the Democrats Go on the Offensive

Voting against roads, bridges, kids, moms, grandmas, and grandpas should
come with a price. BY HAROLD MEYERSON

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