This just in! Inflation and Potato Recipes on the Rise!
My social media feed is full of evidence that the current inflation increase in the US is affecting people on a global scale; and it’s not going away. We have tweets talking about how there were complaints in regards to raising the minimum wage, primarily that it would increase food prices. Then they didn’t raise the minimum wage, but yet they went ahead and increased food prices anyways. Even in the Netherlands I have seen the price of a cucumber almsot double in the course of the past year. In the United States, inflation is up 7% as of December 2021 and it’s hard to know if this is where it’s going to peak or if it can ascend further. The situation is bleak and only exacerbated by knowing that conversations around employee compensation to match the inflation spike have been stalled, if not discarded completely.
One of the problems that I also have with all of this is that as I’m seeing stories about inflation increasing, I’m simultaneously getting inundated with recipes based on potatoes. Now, I have nothing against potatoes. They are a good thing, in moderation. It’s no secret that potatoes are quite economical, very nutritious, filling, and in the past they have gotten people through some hard times. But if I put these things together, are we now saying that we’ve learned nothing from past financial pitfalls? In the past hundreds of years, with all of the advances in education and study of economics; have we gained nothing to keep 1st world citizens from the path to famine? And it’s not that there isn’t money to go around. And it’s not that we’re in the same localized economies that we were hundreds of years ago. We have globalization, we have the movement of goods and services. We have grocery stores full of products from all over the world; fresh products from all over the world. Yet, as inflation increases, and food prices go up, I am not onboard with this solution of “let them eat potatoes”. This solution that I’m seeing on the public level, is to go back to the solution from hundreds of years ago and scavenge for what you can. Try and make the most of a potato. This is not progress.
