Affordability: We Need Higher Incomes, Not Lower Prices

Everyone’s talking about affordability or, more precisely, unaffordability—and the issue is likely to drive U.S. politics for the foreseeable future.

Affordability is subtraction. If your income is higher than your expenses, goods and services are affordable. The current discussion about affordability, however, is exclusively about the expense side of the equation. The implication is, you will never get a raise.

Trump claims things are getting cheaper. But polls show his message isn’t landing. So Republicans are promising to pivot back to domestic issues from the sexy overseas crises that have a way of distracting presidents.

The biggest challenge for policymakers is that the feeling-broke problem is bigger than analysts for both major parties seem to understand.

Even people earning six figures—which puts them in the top 18% of wage earners—are secretly struggling to keep afloat. “Our data shows that even high earners are financially anxious—they’re living the illusion of affluence while privately juggling credit cards, debt, and survival strategies,” Libby Rodney, the Harris Poll’s chief strategy officer, says. Even the over-$200K set—the top 5%—are faking it to make it. 64% tell Harris pollsters that they use rewards points to pay for essentials, 50% have used “buy now, pay later” plans to buy cheap stuff under $100, and 46% rely on credit cards to make ends meet. An economy in which 95%-plus of the population can’t pay their bills is worthless.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans care about poor people; that’s clear from the fact that neither party has even proposed a major anti-poverty program since the 1960s. But politicians do care about the upper middle class, who are suffering to a surprising extent.

Reading 2025 election tea leaves, Democrats hope they can capitalize on widespread disappointment with Trump’s failure to deliver on his promise to lower prices. Presidential hopeful and governor Andy Beshear articulates the party’s aspirations in a recent Washington Post op-ed. “Democrats should be the party that will make it possible to build a better life—one in which you’re not just making ends meet but setting your family up for long-term success,” the Kentucky Democrat writes. “Democrats are good at explaining our ‘what.’ Let’s get good at explaining our ‘why.’” Nowhere in the piece, however, does Beshear come close to saying “what” he wants to do about higher prices.

Neither party knows how to cut the cost of goods and services. You and I probably agree why: our elected “representatives” are corrupt and stupid. On the affordability issue, however, that systemic issue is irrelevant.

What no one in the news media or academia or politics wants to tell you is that the government can’t cut the cost of goods and services. They shouldn’t want to. They certainly shouldn’t try.

When policymakers aggressively push prices lower—especially in a highly indebted, wage-stagnant economy like ours—they can trigger one of the most dangerous feedback loops an economy can enter, a vicious circle that is extremely difficult to stop: a deflationary spiral. Most debt (mortgages, corporate bonds, student loans, car loans, credit-card debt, government debt) are set at a fixed interest rate. So when general prices across the board falls, the real value of those debts rises by the same amount. Even though the dollar amount owed hasn’t changed, it’s harder to earn those dollars. Individual and corporate borrowers suddenly owe more in real terms.

To make ends meet, borrowers cut spending, sell assets and hoard cash to pay their now-heavier debt. With less spending, business income falls. Companies cut prices further, either to sell surplus inventory or increase market share. You can only cut prices so much, so employers fire workers and/or cut wages. Laid-off former employees and reduced-wage workers spend less, demand falls more, lower prices chase reduced demand, which leads to more layoffs.

Consumers and businesses acclimate to a new normal in which they know prices will be lower next month or next year. Even those with money postpone their purchases. Why buy now? It’ll be cheaper later.
The macroeconomy goes bust. The incredible shrinking prices of houses, commercial real estate, stocks—not to mention a tidal wave of loan defaults—undermine the foundation of the financial system, bank capitalization. Banks cut lending to preserve their capital ratios, credit becomes tighter than ever. Investment collapses. You get the idea. The Great Depression, Japan’s “Lost Decade” of 1995-to-2005 and the southern Eurozone collapse of 2011-to-2014 in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain (the so-called “PIGS”) were triggered by deflationary spirals.

You wouldn’t know it to listen to the politicians and pundits, but there is a solution to the affordability crunch. As I alluded at the beginning of this piece, the answer isn’t lower prices. Our system (which I would get rid of) requires inflation in order to encourage the consumerism that drives two-thirds of GDP. Why not buy now? It’ll be more expensive later.

What Americans need is higher wages. Salaries have been stagnant or falling in real terms, failing to keep up with inflation and productivity gains since the Vietnam War. If your paycheck increases faster than inflation, you’re better off. This is the conversation we ought to be having right now.

An increase in the federal minimum wage, frozen at $7.25 an hour since 2009, would benefit 22 to 35 million workers and the businesses where they shop. Had the minimum wage kept up with inflation since Vietnam, it would be about $30.

One out of 12 workers is classified as an independent contractor—many of them illegally even though they work full-time. Enforcing federal labor law would force employers to pay them properly.

Half of Americans worry that they’ll lose their job to A.I. or another form of automation. We need a federal jobs-retraining program to allow some workers to retool for 21^st century jobs and a guaranteed national income to allow others to survive and thrive without having to work.

Government should tame the Wild West of gig-economy jobs like driving for Uber—currently one out of three workers—by setting minimum compensation structures.

Why are we talking about something we can’t do—cut prices—and not something we should do—raising wages? The same reason capitalists loved slavery. They want you to work. But they don’t want to pay you.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou.”)