Readers respond to last week’s Feedback Friday topic, which was:
Cost of Living
Governor Larry Hogan announced on Thursday that all Maryland state employees will receive a 4.5 percent wage hike, which he touted as a cost-of-living adjustment. Some in the private sector have also assuaged their employees’ economic burden by granting similar wage adjustments. This, all in response to increasing inflation, cost of borrowing money (interest rate hikes), and price points of consumer goods, food, energy, etc. It seems every supply chain has been affected by, first, pandemic pressures, and second, the emergence of inflation and challenging U.S. and global economies (War in Ukraine, for example, has hit the global energy supply chain hard).
How are you handling the rising cost of living for yourself, dependents, employees, etc.? And what do you attribute inflation and the general state of the economy to? Solutions?
Here’s what you said:
Think it's great, but what about the retires in the State pension plan???
Jeannette Ripley, Queenstown
Inflation ultimately is caused by two things (1) price expectations and (2) supply and demand. Supply and demand is what underpins market economies. If we want a fairly free market economy, we've got to live with occasional bouts of inflation. What the Fed and the government are doing is trying to manage expectations, to convince people that they're actions will sooner or later bring inflation down without interfering too much with market dynamics.
We've also got to appreciate that certain prices -- carbon based energy, food, ocean shipping -- are beyond our ability to control. As in a 12-step program, we've got to learn to accept what we cannot control, at least not in the short run.
I'm retired living on a fixed income. My housing and medical costs are unchanged. Food and gas are more expensive but I don't drive all that much. All in all, no big deal. And I'll benefit from the social security bump long after inflation is done.
Marc Knapp, Annapolis
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