Inflation Is Ruining My Family’s Christmas Gift-giving

B uying Christmas presents for our four kids has never been this difficult.

It’s not that they are getting older and pickier — or that their tastes have become more expensive. And it’s not that my wife and I don’t know what they want; after all, they gave us lists. It’s that every gift costs more, sometimes way more, than we had budgeted. And, even when we’ve found something, we’d be hard-pressed to get it shipped to us before February.

Over the past two months, we’ve found that toys are anywhere from 10 to 20 percent more expensive than we had expected, which tracks with findings nationwide. What’s worse, we can’t find much of anything our kids want. Our 13-year-old son asked for a Fortnite T-shirt. Out of stock. Fortnite-branded Nerf toys? Nowhere to be found. Animal Crossing Amiibo packs? Forget about it. Even the LED fidget spinner one of my younger kids wanted is unavailable before Christmas.

The gifts that are available tend to not be feasible, either. While our local Walmart doesn’t have any PlayStation 5 consoles left in stock, the company website does . . . for $1,029.99 plus tax. It’s Christmas shopping in reverse. We can’t start with what the kids want. We start with what the stores have, and hope we can afford it.

It’s the same story with Christmas dinner. I make a mean pork butt, but when I bought the cut this week, the price was through the roof. The news tells me that pork prices are up by almost 17 percent; I can tell you that it’s much worse than that. From pasta to parsley, we couldn’t find the things we were able to buy last year. Our local Kroger has been out of a lot of things for months, and in some cases, all year.

Why is this happening? While a number of factors are at play, perhaps the biggest is the massive increase in federal spending we’ve witnessed over the past year. My family’s Christmas shopping struggles are directly related to the Biden administration’s spending binge.

Anyone who’s taken a high-school economics course knows what drives inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods. Sure enough, the Biden administration has been throwing gobs of money at people, regardless of the consequences.

There’s the new child-tax-credit expansion, which gives parents thousands of dollars per kid. There’s the expanded food-stamps program, which the administration unilaterally increased by 25 percent. The Biden administration is spending so much money that millions of people can make nearly three times more from government support than at a minimum wage job. Things are so bad, government programs can even pay more than the median job.

No wonder presents and pork are so pricey. While the White House recently attempted to gaslight the public by blaming “greedy meat conglomerates” for the elevated prices, no one should be fooled. The Biden administration alone is responsible for the fact that inflation is at a 39-year high and shows no signs of slowing down.

The reckless federal spending has contributed to the shortages we’ve been experiencing, too.

By paying millions of people not to work, the Biden administration has made it more difficult for businesses to bounce back and meet holiday demand. Worker shortages are everywhere, including virtually every store where my family shops, along with the factories that supply them. The percentage of people working is nowhere near where it was pre-pandemic. That’s what happens when government programs pay so much more than gainful employment.

Ending this crisis should be the top priority for President Biden and Democrats in Congress. Stopping the deluge of taxpayer dollars for various government programs would be a good start. Instead, they want to open the floodgates even more. The only reason they haven’t succeeded is that Senator Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) has refused to support the spending binge otherwise known as the Build Back Better Act.

Since Senator Manchin announced his opposition to the bill at the start of Christmas week, the White House and congressional Democrats have done nothing but criticize him. But they should be thanking him. The Build Back Better Act’s price tag is $1.75 trillion; once you forgo the budget gimmicks that Congress has included, the real total is closer to $5 trillion. If the bill passed, there’d be even more money chasing even fewer goods, and even more people making more from welfare than work.

By stopping the Build Back Better Act, Senator Manchin has prevented even higher inflation and bigger shortages. While it’s possible that the bill could come back in the New Year, killing it was the Christmas present that America needed this year. And unlike so many Christmas gifts this year, it’s a present America can afford.