With Thanksgiving just around the corner, 82% of likely voters worry the supply chain crunch will lead to shortages, a new poll reveals.
The worry, the Rasmussen survey shows, is over food and basic supplies — not luxury items.
This comes as the 12-month inflation rate through October reached 6.2%, its highest level since the early 1990s. That’s when “It’s the economy, stupid” forever became a soundbite.
Economist David Kotz, who teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said blame it on the pandemic.
“COVID produced an atypical recession,” he said Friday. “Time will fix it.”
How much time? Kotz said it “might take six months to a year” for the supply chain to open up. He compared the economy today to post-war America in 1946-1948 when the country pivoted from building tanks and bombers to refrigerators and cars again.
But the economy won’t reboot quickly, he added.
The freight price index is up 20% from a year ago, according to the Federal Reserve Bank, and ports are jammed with some worrying President Biden’s New Year’s vaccine mandate may keep some employees at home.
Biden’s approval rating is suffering because of it with a dismal 42.4% Real Clear Politics average. (That mark sinks to 38.7% when the president is judged only on the economy.)
It gets worse:
* Biden rates 37.1% with his handling of foreign policy (The Afghanistan withdrawal still haunts him).
* 29.4% on immigration (the Southern border mess).
* 47.5% on the handling of the pandemic.
* Lastly, and worst of all, 29.6% on the direction the country is heading.
Other Democrats, especially those facing midterm elections, are feeling the pinch.
Georgia U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock told FOX Business he’s “laser-focused on working to curb rising prices, and strengthen economic stability and opportunity for hardworking families.”
West Virginia U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin said inflation is the big worry.
“By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not ‘transitory’ and is instead getting worse. From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day,” he said.
The average cost of a gallon of regular gas in Massachusetts was $3.409 as of Friday, according to AAA. That’s slightly lower than the national average of $3.416.
That average jumps for Boston motorists to $3.422 — and it keeps on climbing.
If Thanksgiving dinners aren’t already burned, the next big test will be holiday sales. The National Retail Federation reports imports are at an all-time high.
“Imports at the nation’s congested container ports are expected to remain at near-record levels for the remainder of the year,” the organization reports.
Holiday shoppers won’t be happy if the right gifts aren’t under the trees after the epic year we’ve just had.
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JUST 82%?? I think thye are off by a dozen or more…
This is the satanic democratic parties plan to completely destroy holidays. Don’t give them your happiness during the holidays. That is their main objective to make Americans watch how bad things will be while they are scheming with other plans for our future. They are in a hole they dug that is now too deep to crawl out of.