Michael Snyder

Inflation is a tax that nobody can escape.  No matter how hard you may try, the rising cost of living is going to catch up with you eventually, and we live at a time when the cost of living has become exceedingly painful.  The reason why the cost of living has become such an important issue is because those that are running the system have been treating our currency like toilet paper.  Many of us warned what would happen when the Federal Reserve started printing money out of thin air and monetizing the debt.  But instead of learning their lesson, they are beginning to do it again.  And Congress is spending so much money that the monthly budget deficit for the month of October just set an all-time record.  What they are doing to us is literally insane, and the middle class is dying right in front of our eyes.

In so many ways, the U.S. economy is starting to resemble the economy of the Weimar Republic just before hyperinflation kicked in.

As the U.S. dollar rapidly loses value, even high earners are now struggling to stay afloat financially.

If you doubt this, just consider the shocking results of a brand new Harris poll…

• Six figures is survival, not success: 64% of six-figure earners say six figures is no longer a sign of wealth but survival mode — a paycheck that covers costs, not comfort. The benchmark of success has become the bare minimum to keep up.

• The American Dream feels out of reach: More than half of six-figure earners say the Dream no longer feels attainable, revealing a generation of professionals who have achieved everything on paper but feel they’re standing on financial quicksand.

• Where luxury used to live, the basics now move in: Groceries, housing, and healthcare are the top expenses draining even the top 10%. Vacations, savings, and wellness — once staples of comfort — have quietly slipped into the “nice-to-have” category.

• The illusion of wealth is exhausting: Many top earners say people assume they can afford it all, yet behind the image of success are quiet sacrifices: skipped purchases, delayed plans, and a fragile sense of security.

• Credit cards as life rafts: Three-quarters of six-figure earners have used a credit card in the past three months because they ran out of cash, not to collect points. For many, plastic has become the bridge between paychecks.

• Affluence, paid in installments: BNPL use is highest among $200k+ households — the top 10% now financing everyday life, from groceries to gas, in ways once reserved for those just getting by.

• The new middle class begins where old wealth used to end: Six-figure earners now define financial comfort at $200k+, and more than half say they’d need double their current income to finally feel secure. The top 10% are quietly struggling — so what happens to the other 90%?

If nearly two-thirds of six figure earners feel like what they are bringing in is only enough for “survival mode”, what does that say about our economy as a whole?

The truth is that our leaders are systematically murdering the American Dream.

I have been ranting about this for years, and now people all over the country are finally waking up to what they have done to us.

According to a new AP-NORC poll, 87 percent of Americans have noticed “higher than usual prices for groceries in the past few months”…

The survey indicates that it’s the level of prices — and not just the rate of inflation — that is the point of pain for many families. About 9 in 10 U.S. adults, 87%, say they noticed higher than usual prices for groceries in the past few months, while about two-thirds say they’ve experienced higher prices than usual for electricity and holiday gifts. About half say they’ve seen higher than normal prices for gas recently.

It is virtually impossible to get 87 percent of Americans to agree on anything.

But somehow we are all convinced that grocery prices have been going up.

When I go to the grocery store, I can hardly believe how high prices have become.

Some things are now three or four times as much as they once were.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, we have witnessed such a dramatic shift.

But this is only just the beginning.

According to Fox Business, the proportion of U.S. small businesses that are raising their selling prices “jumped by an all-time high in November”…

The share of small businesses raising their selling prices jumped by an all-time high in November as inflationary pressure continued to impact businesses and consumers, according to a new report by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB).

NFIB’s monthly report on small business economic trends for November found a 13-point jump in the net percent of owners who reported raising their average selling prices, which was the largest monthly jump in the history of the survey.

That pushed the percent of owners saying they’re raising average selling prices to a net of 34%, which is the highest reading in the survey since March 2023. That’s also well above the monthly average of a net 13%.

What this means is that our cost of living crisis is accelerating.

If your paycheck is not keeping up, you are losing ground.

Meanwhile, mass layoffs continue to occur all over the United States.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. employers have announced a grand total of almost 1.2 million job cuts so far this year…

Americans are growing increasingly terrified about layoffs – and with good reason. Cuts are accelerating, and no industry feels safe. All told, employers have announced roughly 1.2 million cuts so far this year, according to layoff tracker Challenger, Gray & Christmas – that’s 54 percent more than during the first 11 months of 2024. Perhaps the most unsettling is that industries once seen as safe harbors for employees – tech, manufacturing and even small business – are now among the hardest hit. That’s left millions of workers asking the same pressing question: How do I avoid getting the chop?

Retail is one of the industries that has been hit particularly hard.

So far in 2025, retailers have announced almost 140 percent more job cuts than they did during the same period in 2024…

For the year so far, the industry has announced 91,954 job cuts, up nearly 140% from the same period in 2024. The cuts are primarily attributable to softening demand, tariff uncertainty and changing consumer preferences, per the report.

As I discussed last week, the tourism industry has also fallen on extremely hard times.

In New Orleans, a lack of tourists is causing the streets to be quieter than they have been in a long, long time…

But in the quieter areas, things are, well, quieter. On a cool December evening as raindrops polka-dotted the pavement, longtime street performer Onunze Ubaka, 72, crooned Motown classics to a virtually empty corner off the usually busy Jackson Square in the French Quarter. Few tourists passed by. Even fewer stopped to drop dollar bills into his white tip bucket.

“You can feel the change,” Ubaka said in between songs from Lou Rawls and The Temptations. Inside his tip bucket, a small pile of greenbacks barely covered the 15-pound dumbbell he started putting in after a young man tried to run off with it.

Ubaka said there’s been a general economic slowdown, in particular a loss of international tourists.

Just look around.

Everything is changing.

You would have to be blind not to see it.

Sadly, a whole lot more pain is on the way.

Printing more money won’t solve our problems.

It will only make things even worse.

Borrowing and spending more money won’t solve our problems either.

Our leaders kicked the can down the road for many years, but now the entire road is coming to an end.

They kept trying to outrun the laws of economics, and for a while they actually thought that they were getting away with it.

But now a time of reckoning has arrived, and it is not going to be fun.