The Threat Inflation Poses to Economic Liberty

Right now, inflation in America is roaring out of control. The CPI (the Consumer Price Index) is at a stomach-churning 7.9% right now, with other measures of inflation even higher. One such higher measure of inflation is the Producer Price Index, which currently sits at a massive 10%.

While higher gas prices, higher food prices, and car prices so ridiculous they make your skin crawl are dominating the news, there’s another, potentially more pernicious effect of the current inflation regime: it’s wrecking small businesses, the traditional backbone of the middle class and thus economic liberty.

Senator Rand Paul highlighted that in his recent report on inflation and its effects.

For example, at one point the report provides that:

• 82 percent of small businesses reported raising prices in the last several
  months, 42 percent reported raising prices by 20 percent or more.
• 45 percent of small businesses reported taking out a loan to cope with the
  pressures of inflation in this last year.
• Large corporations have reported consistent profit margins.

So, while small businesses have struggled under the weight of Bidenflation, Big Business is doing just fine.

Another part of Senator Paul’s report provides that:

A recent poll by Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses project24 found that:

• 86 percent of polled small business owners are concerned about inflation;
• 84 percent have seen an increase in operating costs;
• 81 percent indicate that inflationary pressures are still increasing; and
• 74 percent say inflation has negatively impacted their businesses financial
  health.

Still another part of the report notes that:

Aside from the pressures imposed on consumers, small businesses have faced devastating blows to their already COVID-strained profit margin, creating a difficult decision of either passing on costs, downsizing, or closing.

All in all, what the report shows when it comes to the financial situation small businesses are facing is that those businesses are in dire straights; already on a precarious financial position thanks to Covid-induced shutdowns, shutdowns many Big Businesses weren’t as affected by, small businesses are now being pushed off the ledge by inflation, either having to raise prices too high to attract customers or forced to suffer losses by selling goods at prices that don’t reflect the inflationary regime.

That matters because small businesses have traditionally been the backbone of the middle class. Family restaurants, small shops, little businesses located around small towns or street corners, those are the way the American middle class has stayed strong, or at least used to.

Corporate jobs with Big Business are generally good for an upper-crust, white-collar managerial class, or low-paying terrible jobs for “wage slaves” making a few dollars an hour.

It’s in small businesses, the sort being crushed by small business, that the American middle-class has traditionally prospered and where liberty has triumphed.

Why is that important when it comes to liberty? Your pizza place, bike shop, or small store can’t be taken from you if you speak your mind on Twitter or wave a Trump flag. Your business is your business: no one else’s. That’s perhaps more economically dangerous and difficult, as it’s all up to you, but that requirement of responsibility breeds a deep respect for liberty and the independce created by it means that you’re free to speak your mind if you see fit.

Not so at a corporate gig. Whether a high-level manager or minimum-wage fry cook, you can be fired in an instant if the businesses deems you “offensive” or some sort of “ist” for what you say; just look at James Damore, after all. He followed instructions and was fired for it because leftists didn’t like the outcome!

That’s no liberty; that’s sitting on a razor’s edge of unemployment with your continued survival based on the whims of a gender studies major, something that’s not the case at a small business.

Small businesses are key to our liberty; no wonder the elite-created inflation is wrecking them.

By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.