LinkedIn on Monday, February 16, 2026
As President Trump is beginning to realize – despite his limited intelligence and reasoning distorted by the malignant narcissism by which he is afflicted – voters don’t care about rates of inflation. What they care about is prices. That the rate of inflation for a given item might be zero is inconsequential if the price of that item is so high as to make it unbearably expensive.
(Not incidentally, it’s also important to note that most Americans, regardless of party affiliation or the lack thereof, are nice people and don’t care much for bands of masked stormtroopers roaming the streets of our cities, hurting and even killing our people. Nor do they appreciate a government that is desperately withholding information and justice when it comes to men guilty of statutory rape.)
So, what are Trump and Republicans in Congress doing to lower prices with the hope of taking control of the affordability issue from their Democratic opponents? In fact, there is nothing they know how or are willing to do.
“Why is that?”
Think of it this way… The price of anything is composed of three elements: materials, labor and profit. Now you may be saying, “What about marketing, for example?” Well, marketing is itself composed of…?
“Materials, labor and profit.”
Exactly. Same for every component of every product or service that is mined or grown or produced and then sold to make a more complex final product that we consume. Materials, labor and profit. It’s just that simple.
The problem for Trump and the Republicans, because they’re the ones in charge right now, is that the only way to lower the prices of anything – not the rate of inflation, but the current prices of goods and services and do it without reducing what people earn and the profits companies make – is to increase productivity. Labor and invested profits need to be more productive. Need to produce more “stuff” for the same effort and money. But that’s really hard and damn near impossible for government to make happen. And takes time for the economy to accomplish on its own.
Government needs to do its best to encourage the economy to accomplish these increases in productivity in as painless a process as possible. Unfortunately, Trump and the Republicans in Congress are pretty much clueless and inclined to protect profits, including the disposable, after tax income of the wealthy, regardless of the implications for the welfare of most of us.
Oblivious and impotent when it comes to controlling the economy, Trump and his minions have no choice but to cheat. Messaging doesn’t work. You can’t tell voters that prices aren’t what they are when they go to the grocery store or try to buy a car. Trump’s tariffs are just making matters worse. Ordinary voters know it and have concluded that he’s an idiot. All Trump and company can do is try to rig the mid-term and next Presidential elections to keep themselves in power and, for some of them, out of jail.
Why not just work with the Democrats on economic and social issues such as immigration? And share the progress they make with their constituents? Why not just do the job for which people elected them instead of trying so hard in so many ways to game the system? The simple answer is that following someone already in power is easier than doing the right thing, particularly if it means admitting that you’ve been wrong and that the person you’ve been following is, in fact, as dumb as he is nuts – and that you and your constituents have had enough of his crap.
The good news is that slowly, but surely, Republicans in Congress, motivated in large part by the polls and results of special elections, appear to be coming to their senses. Rapidly declining popular support has a way of slapping elected officials back to reality. Truth, justice and the American way is the purpose and destiny of our country – no matter what Stephen Miller, the authors of “Project 2025” and other Trump sycophants and for-profit enablers would have us become.
In the end, Trump et al will have inadvertently done us a great favor by pointing out the shortcomings of our system of government that we need to fix. And we will end up all the better for the mess and pain they have caused. Turns out, 250 years later, we Americans are as determined to be free and unafraid of fighting for the right and privilege of it as were our founding fathers and mothers.
Trump, Miller and friends are right. Revolution is in the air. The point they’re just beginning to realize is that the revolution is ours, not theirs. As the business expression goes, they’ve written a check with their mouths that their asses can’t cash.
-Les
