Exactly
Our cost of living expenses are WAY up from just a few years ago.
Everything from gas to diesel, groceries, propane (heating), electric, water, Etc.
Everything costs a lot more.
The reason why you are seeing higher prices is WALL ST profit gouging pure & simple
Go to any market index site and check the oil prices , they are all so far down that OPC + is cutting production in 1/2 to try & bring the price back to the $ 75 -$ 100 mark.
As it is reporting season right now, follow this up with checking the returns on all of the oil companies & retailers
Profit percentages are way way up and that only happens whe the margins are up and that is price gouging .
Australia has avoided the worst of the downturns for 1 reason & 1 reason only, record levels of immigrants
You are being brainwashed by the Trump maga republicans .
If you stop & think about it , undocumented migrants actually save the government money because they never go to a public hospital, never claim social security , they never get any benefits they have to pay full price for every thing and they have to live so they have to buy things and when vendors know they are illegals most jack up the prices they pay because they know illegals have no way of registering a complaint , they have to live some where and they have to rent because they can not purchase US real estate
Illegal very rarely commit crimes, not even a parking fine , because being caught means instant deportation , now this bit excludes the drug runners, but they go back again for a second shipment and again most of them are working for a US citizen , and the bulk of all illicit drugs come in via the ports not via the border .
Serious criminals bribe officials to get visas & fly in or fly in using a charter flight as border running is way too risky for them, and again the pilots smuggling them in are usually you flag waving church going hand on your heart republican voters .
There will of course be a very small minority of rat bags who do cause trouble but they usually get booted out.
Then there is the geopolitical aspect .
Russia is doing it's best to destabilise the USA , create unrest and stoke the fires for civil war , and the proof was the Jan 6th riots.
And one of these tools is to escalate the border issue way out of hand by posting total BS on social media that the Americans fall for, hook line & sinker .
A for instance there were over 2000 images of supposed illegals storming across the border taken off social media in the past 2 months .
All of them were not a US border post and the bulk were from Venezuela , security camera footage on toll booths , one was a foot ball stadium etc etc etc .
In fact several congress people presented these fake images to congress in the past few weeks during the Ukraine aid bill fiasco .
And Russia is recruiting illegals and bussing them up close to border posts just after the media gets a tip off that a mass border crossing is under way .
Next time you hear some one mouthing off about the dire straits of the mass illegal scourge , write down every point they make, then ask yourself does this make sense to me then do some fact checking.
Again here was a republican congress person stating that the democrats were involved in smuggling in these illegals to increase the democratic vote in republican seats to swing the election in the democrats favour which of course is nonsense and if you do not believe then then check the rules about being elegible to vote if you are an immigrant , And if that was the case, one might ask how much does that elected representative actually know about the way they were elected ?