...The above chart offers a powerful insight as to why the MAGA talking point about the rate of inflationary increase slowing down doesn’t resonant with the electorate. In case after case of recurring cost of living purchases, household budgets remain impaled on the high price levels for everyday goods and services which have erupted since 2020.
The Great Deformation:...David StockmanBest Price: $4.26Buy New $8.99(as of 05:50 UTC - Details)
For instance, there are about 220 million beef eaters in the US, and they know damn well that there has been no relief at all from the soaring price of beef. In fact, ground beef prices have risen from $5.61 per pound in December 2024 to $6.69 per pound in December 2025, representing a 19.3% gain during the Donald’s first year.
But that’s not the half of it. During the long 36 year period between 1984 and February 2020, the inflation rate for hamburger was 3.1% per annum. That was no bargain to write home about at all, but, as depicted by the graph below, it was moderate and reasonably steady year-to-year.
No more. At $6.69 per pound in December 2025, the price was up by +72% from where it stood on the eve of the pandemic in February 2020: In round terms, the cost of even hamburger meat has therefore risen at a 10% per annum rate for six years running.
In short, this is where the “affordability” complaint arises from: Washington’s inflation is hitting the dinner table week after week after week, and when you look at the last nine-years of the chart, the MAGA talking point that it’s all Sleepy Joe Biden’s fault doesn’t wash: The $3.13 per pound increase since December 2016 has been split roughly 50/50 between the GOP and Dem tenures in the White House.
Ground Beef Price Per Pound Increase:
- Trump 1.0 & 2.0: +$1.47.
- Sleepy Joe Biden: +$1.66.
- Total Increase: +$3.13
Ground Beef Average Price Per Pound: 1984 to 2025

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/02/david-stockman/the-affordability-crisis-and-the-unipartys-inflation-shell-game/
At the end of the day, of course, inflation is not defined by the rate of increase in any particular commodity or product sector, but by the general price level increase, or weighted average of all prices, over time. And that, in turn, is a function of the Fed’s printing presses.
Under a non-inflationary monetary policy, a reduction in the layer flocks would cause the relative price of eggs to rise, but it would also cause some other commodity prices to fall owing to the re-allocation of existing purchasing power. That is, absent an increase in fake demand financed by printing press credit.
And on that score, both parties have spent like drunken sailors and urged/endorsed/endured the Fed’s printing press monetization of all that debt. As shown in the graph below, the Fed’s balance sheet is still up by 25% from its February 2020 level, and the 16% trimmed mean CPI is is also up by 25%.

Needless to say, the embedded 4.2% average inflation rate since February 2020 is exactly why America has an affordability problem. If continued for a decade, its would result in the dollar’s purchasing power dropping to just 59 cents by the end of the period.
So the underlying excess fiat credit which emanated from the Fed during the same period is the cause of the inflation that has ebbed and flowed through various product sectors per the cases reviewed above. And, yes, the rate of CPI increase has slowed down since March 2022, but that’s because the Fed has finally attempted to trim its egregiously bloated balance sheet.
Yet and yet. The Donald is on the warpath against even the half-hearted anti-inflationary steps that have been taken by the Eccles Building.
If Trump gets his way and appoints another money-printer when Powell’s term ends in April, the recent inflation respite in the 3%+/- zone will surely re-acclerate. And then even the Donald may be forced to concede that “affordability” is no kind of hoax at all.