In a scene from the 1990 holiday movie “Home Alone,” 8-year-old Kevin McCallister went grocery shopping by himself. He purchased a number of grocery and household items for less than $20.
Times have changed. Last year, the same grocery list would have cost $44.40, and this year under the White House’s economic plan, it costs a whopping $72.28 A West Virginia mother-of-two and small business owner shared her reaction to rising costs with Fox News.
“Different parts of the country are going to see different rates of inflation,” said Rochelle Chalmers, owner of Drifter Donuts. “And I know that some rates of inflation are normal across decades. But the inflation that we have felt in the grocery store has been just the same as every other American. And it is tough trying to pay for groceries week to week.”
Although there has been some cooling in prices since inflation’s peak, prices are still pinching the wallets of everyday Americans and creating challenges for business owners. According to the October consumer price index, the price of everyday goods including gasoline, groceries and rent was unchanged in the previous month. Prices climbed 3.2 percent from the same time last year.
“We wish that the prices would have stayed the same,” Chalmers said. “But unfortunately, due to more demand, there’s more businesses entering the market after COVID and there’s also more supply chain issues that we’re dealing with. We’ve had disruptions in our product. Sometimes we’ve had to wonder, will we be able to operate? We’re a weekend business, will we make it to this weekend with as much product as we currently have?”
According to a recent poll, only 29 percent of consumers optimistically said the worst is over on the economy, an improvement from 25 percent in 2022. But more than twice as many, 67 percent, don’t see any signs the economy has started to turn the corner. That includes most Republicans (84 percent) and independents (77 percent).
It’s not clear what Kevin McCallister would think.
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice