A Golden or Gilded Age?

[00:00:02] In spite of claims that we're entering a golden age, many young people are struggling under the weight of rising prices. What can Catholics, both young and old, do to help? Hello, I'm Eric Sammons and welcome to Crisis Point. [00:00:28] Foreign. [00:00:34] I was on vacation last week, so I didn't have a podcast, any podcast. Last week I was actually a Catholic Family land is the second year in a row my family's gone. It's outside of Steubenville. It's like a week long Catholic family fest. [00:00:49] They have mass, they have confessions, they have lots of activities, they have talks for all different ages and different groups. [00:00:59] I mean they have a basketball court, a pickleball court, a baseball field, a swimming pool, a bunch of gaga goggle ball, I think it's called, I don't know, one of my daughters loves it. [00:01:10] A bunch of other stuff. It's a lot of fun. And we go along with some other families in our parish go as well. And it's a great time. I said, like I said, I think we, we went last year. I think I told everybody we went last year. So highly recommended. [00:01:22] Okay, but now we're back and I'm back to reality. The great thing about vacation is I try to log off of reality for a little while. But I came back and there was a little debate going on about intra conservative debate, going on about affordability. [00:01:39] But I also noted that yesterday, I think it was yesterday, President Trump said, we're entering a golden age. And this isn't the first time he said this, but this was kind of made the news. [00:01:50] I mean, honestly, it's typical boomer talk. [00:01:52] We're entering this golden age. I mean, the truth is it is probably good for his generation and it's good for my generation. I'm Gen X. [00:02:00] It's good for my generation in a lot of ways. [00:02:03] It's good, definitely good for the boomers. Not so good though, as you get younger. Not so good. I, I willing to bet if you ask the average 25 year old whether they're conservative or liberal, no matter what their political affiliations are, if you ask them, are you in a gold, do you feel like you're in a golden age? I think they would probably say no. Now, of course, Trump's also probably in a golden age because he's made so much money off his crypto deals, which has been, I mean, as somebody who's a bitcoin guy, I'm not a crypto guy. If you don't know the difference, you need to get my book moral money and Find out. But it's been especially distressing to see him clearly make his family and him even more rich off of these very shady crypto deals. Now, I will say, though, this is not going to be an anti Trump podcast. [00:02:52] People know my criticisms of the president. I will criticize him in this podcast. But this, that's not the point of this. It's not. What I am about to talk about is not on Trump solely. It's not just an anti Trump tirade on my part or anything like that. [00:03:06] I want to talk about, though, this debate about affordability. So last week while I was gone, I guess it was Matt Walsh, the Daily Wire. [00:03:14] Matt's great. He posted something about how grocery prices are rising and they're just getting ridiculous. [00:03:22] And this led to a huge debate where you within conservatism, where you had many of the mag influencers saying, no, you're just making this up. It's all Biden inflation. And since 2024, it's been fine and it's not really that bad. Or they'd even say, somebody like Mark Levin would say, well, just suck it up, buttercup, and we got a war to fight. We got, we got, you know, people to kill. [00:03:47] I don't care if it's going to cost you more at the gas pump or not. You just got to suck it up like the greatest generation. Not his generation, of course, he's a boomer, but the greatest generation. [00:03:57] And so there was, there was a huge fight over this. [00:04:00] And I just want to say, first of all, in anybody who acts like we don't have ridiculously rising prices is just gaslighting. If they say it's not that bad or anything like that, they're just simply gaslighting. It just simply isn't true. And it's not just groceries. [00:04:20] I mean, just to mention groceries, I notice it because I don't do the grocery shopping in my family. My wife does. But I see the bills each month when I do our budget and everything, I look and see how much we're spending. And I usually kind of see, not every month, but some months I will kind of break it down, see how much is in groceries, and I see it going up. And when I talk to my wife, she's great about not overspending. I mean, she, she is actually more frugal than I am, which is saying something. [00:04:49] And when it goes up, I just kind of talk to her about it. And usually it's like there's nothing we can do about it. It's just going up. But I also noticed it. I think I noticed it more clearly. [00:04:59] Every once in a while I'll run to the store to get some things for whatever reason, like, okay, just pick up a few items. And I've been doing this, you know, our whole marriage where I, like I said, I don't do most of grocery shopping, but I'll be the one who pick up a few items. And usually they're the same type of things. Oh, we need, you know, some coffee or we need milk or we need this, you know, some fruit or whatever. Little, A few, little things. And I remember early in our marriage I would do that and the bill would be under 20 bucks and I pick up a few items. [00:05:25] Recently I did that and it was over $70. Now I'm not saying I bought the exact same thing every time. I don't know. But the point is it's clearly not just a few items that just is going to cost under $20. I can't go to the grocery store and pick up more than two items and it costs under $20. But it's not just me, my ankle evidence. It's obvious prices are going up. And I kind of want to give some of the, the details here. First to talk about grocery prices in the last 10 years. Yes, I did use AI for some of this research, but I did fact check it and, and I made sure it was coming from actual sources. [00:06:03] But okay, let me just give a few examples. [00:06:06] Ground beef. In 2016, a pound of ground beef cost on average $3.96. [00:06:16] In 2024 it costs $5.71, which is a 60, almost 70% increase. And of course, anything from 2016 to 2024, we know where a lot of that came from. It's the COVID era, money printing. And what Covid did to our economy, I mean a better way to put it, is what the government did to our economy using Covid as a justification. [00:06:42] So that's a 70% increase in those eight years. But then. [00:06:47] So it was 571 in 2024. Today it's 670. [00:06:51] That's a 17% increase in two years. Remember, that's a 17. [00:06:55] That's a 17. [00:06:57] I'm sorry, there is. I made a mistake. I said 70% increase in those eight years. That's a 70% increase over 10 years. [00:07:04] So 17% increase in just the last two years and 70% increase total over the last 10 years. [00:07:10] That's a huge increase in just two years. And remember every increase. This is important to remember every Increase is an increase on previous increases. This is something you see when they say, oh, inflation is down. [00:07:22] What they mean is the increase on top of all the increases you've had in the past is not as much as it was in the past. [00:07:31] So if inflation, the price raising was 5% last year and it's 3% this year, they'll say inflation went down. [00:07:42] But the reality is it's not just the 3%. It's 3% on top of the 5%. [00:07:50] So we had, you know, a lot of things like that. I noticed in the comments. I just want to pull this up real quick. In the comments, Phoenix said that beef is actually tied to a lot of things. But in 2021, we had a kill off and it's predicted that prices would be affected down the road for a decade. Just so you know, Phoenix, I'm not just going to mention beef. This is not just a beef situation. [00:08:11] Okay, so coffee, coffee, for example, in 2016 it was $4.41 for a pound of ground coffee. [00:08:21] In 2024, it was $7.10. In 2026, it was $9.61 on average for a pound of ground coffee. That is a 118% increase over 10 years in the cost of coffee. [00:08:39] 118% increase. I don't even drink coffee and I know that's crazy. My wife does. I don't. [00:08:46] Okay, here's another one. Whole milk, $3.19 in 2016, $3.88 in 2024, $4.07 in 2026. So a 27% increase over the last 10 years and a 5% increase just in the last two years. [00:09:06] We also have the price of eggs. Eggs actually has gone down the last two years, but it's still up 13% since in the last 10 years. So even though the price of eggs has gone down the last two years, that's good. It's still overall more than it was just 10 years ago. [00:09:25] And then we have. [00:09:26] So like you, the average grocery bill, this is grocery bill and this is for a family of four. In 2016, monthly was $9, $910 a month. [00:09:46] In 2024, it's $1,280. In 2026, it's $1,430, $1,430. That is a 57% increase in 10 years on your total cost of groceries for a family of four. [00:10:07] Now, there's a lot of reason, live drivers in all of these increases. I'm not going to claim it's one thing, but I am claiming it has gone up. Don't act like it hasn't gone up. [00:10:17] But then I also want to bring up a couple other things. Gasoline prices. [00:10:21] Gasoline prices. [00:10:23] 2016, regular gas was $2.25. 2024, $3.43. 2026, $3.93. [00:10:34] So it's a 75% increase in the last 10 years in the price of gas. [00:10:40] The beginning of Trump's first term to today, it's a 75% increase in the cost of gas. That's huge considering how much gas people, most people use. And also remember G, gas isn't just how much you use to drive around, but everything gets around needs gas. [00:10:57] So it's not just you driving somewhere that you pay for gas. You pay for gas in the price of everything. So the price of gas does affect everything else. But here's the other big one I wanted to look up single family homes because that's something that's like the American dream that young people, they want to get a single family home. [00:11:16] In 2016, a single family, the median single family home was $235. 235, 235,000 in 2024 is $414,000. And in 2026 it was $440,000. That is an 87% increase in the cost of a single family home from 2016 to 2026 in the last 10 years. [00:11:46] I mean, put all these things together, put your housing, put your gas, put your groceries, it's just ridiculous how much it's gone up. [00:11:57] And the truth is, you know, if you're, maybe if you're a boomer, you're happy about the price has gone up. I mean, I've owned my home for 10 years. I bought my home actually 10 years ago. So I know the value of my home has gone up dramatically. It's been good for me. [00:12:10] And this has happened to me before. I remember when I bought a house in Washington, D.C. in 2001, right outside D.C. i sold it 10 years later. It had gone up considerably even after the 2008 recession. It had gone up so much before that in value that it was still way up when I sold it 10 years later. [00:12:29] So these rising prices, you know, can be good if you're in the right class, if you have the assets, more importantly, if you're in the right generation. That's one of the reasons why the boomers don't get that upset because they see their stock portfolio go up. Because rising prices also means rising in the, the stocks, they see the value of their home go up. They're like, this is great. It's a golden age, right? [00:12:53] But if you're 25 years old, 30 years old, and you're not, you don't have a house yet, and you're just getting started, you don't have assets, you don't have stocks or anything like that, this is a huge barrier and I want to, I want to break this down in a very direct way for people. I don't usually talk about my own personal situation or details, but I'm going to here just a little bit. [00:13:17] My first full time job was 30 years ago in 2000. [00:13:21] I'm sorry, 1995. I was a computer programmer. It was my first full time job out of college. [00:13:27] So this is 30 years ago. Really 31 years ago. We'll just say 30. [00:13:31] My salary was $33,000 a year. Oh, I'm getting. This is because there's a warning if this is, if you, I'm sure you can hear this. My phone is giving up a warning that there's a, something going on around here. [00:13:46] Probably a storm, but I'm already in a basement. So if it's a, you know, some major storm, oh, well, I'll be fine where I am, but hopefully it won't cut out the power again like it did last time. Okay. So I was making $33,000 a year in. [00:14:05] When I first, my first job, and this was a decent salary. I was a computer programmer. So it wasn't like I was just starting off. I was. If I start off as a dre, let me tell you, it'd be a lot less. But it's a decent salary, but nothing to write home about. And I was living outside Washington D.C. which is an expensive area to live. [00:14:21] And so I, you know. Tornado warning. Yes, right. Tornado warning in Hamilton County. So I guess I'm, I'm okay where I am. Like I said, I'm already in the basement, so I don't have to do much about it. [00:14:33] But if all of a sudden we, we cut out, you'll know why. [00:14:37] So $33,000, I want to put that in today's terms, that would be equivalent to about $72,300 salary. So it'd be like starting off $72,000 salary. Now I don't think, I don't think that that's a. And today that's a decent salary to start off with, just like it was in my day. I think it's a little better than what I was like $33,000. Wasn't that great when I started off. But $72,000 is pretty good. But more importantly is the costs of things. [00:15:07] The median single family home was $133,000. And like I said, it's $440,000 now. That's a 229% increase. [00:15:19] The wage is only up 119,000. So basically the wage is up 119,000, but the home price is up $229,000. [00:15:30] And so basically a household, a vehicle was about $15,000 then. [00:15:37] Today it's about $47,000. For a median vehicle, that's up $206,000. [00:15:43] It's gone up a great deal over that time. [00:15:50] During that time, the cost of everything's gone up a great deal. I could live on $33,000 because I actually, my wife was working when we first got married, but we put all her money aside to pay off college loans. And so that, that way we never lived off it. Once we had our first child, we didn't have to worry about anything happening. We didn't have to worry about depending on her income, she didn't have to work. And I recommend that for everybody, by the way. But the point is, we could live off of $32,000. Outside of Washington, D.C. we lived in a modest place. We lived in second floor of a, of a house where somebody, another family was living downstairs. We live in the second floor of it. So I mean, we weren't like, you know, living off the hall. We, we. Things were a little bit tight at times. We didn't spend, we didn't take any vacations really, other than just going home. The family, we didn't spend a lot of money on travel or anything like that. We didn't have nice, super nice cars. I think I had Toyota. Corolla was our first, you know, car. And it was an old, it was a used one. So. But the point is, though, we could do it. [00:16:48] It would be so much harder to live. The standard living I had, which was modest, but it wasn't like, it wasn't poor, anything like that. That standard of living we had in 1995 on $33,000, you could not live like that at $72,000 today. You just simply couldn't. You couldn't live the exact, you couldn't live the standard living we had today. You would need to make more. You would need to make more. Maybe you could, but it's, it's, it's not easy. [00:17:17] And like I said, I had a decent Job. I had a decent job. I was living, you know, I had, I was computer programmer. [00:17:24] So the point is, is like this stinks. You know, I'll say it, this sucks that you would have to live that young people today can't live. A 25 year old person can't live the same standard of living that I lived. A 25 year old person with the equivalent job and equivalent training and things like that. That's just the reality. And so one question I have is, whose fault is it? Whose fault is it that that's happening, that that happened? I will say this. It's Trump's fault, it's Biden's fault, it's Obama's fault, it's Bush's fault, it's Clinton's fault, it's Everybody in Washington D.C. 's fault, it's the boomer's fault, a lot of it. Because that's who they elected. Gen X. We can blame us too. The us, Gen Xers, millennials, not as much Gen Z. It's not really their fault. They just were born into it. [00:18:22] The point is, what's happened is, is the political parties, they both spin like crazy. To try to act like the Republican Party is the party of, you know, limited government is just ridiculous. Okay, I just have to bring this up. We had the tornado warning here. I'm in my basement and now I see a frog at the window, our basement window. [00:18:47] So like, I don't know what the heck is going on here. We got serious like in the world vibes going on here. We, I'm waiting for locusts to come down, things like that. I've never seen a frog there before. I don't even have a pond or anything. [00:18:58] Anyway, okay, so back, back to my point. [00:19:03] So it's all these people's fault. I mean, there's no question. It's not just, it's not, it's not like Trump's fault or it's not Biden's fault. People like the, the MAGA people track like it's all Biden's fault. That's ridiculous. It's not. [00:19:14] Both parties spin like crazy. They both run the money printer over and over again. [00:19:20] They both run the money printer and the Republicans do it in order to support military spending, to support their stupid foreign wars. I mean, I noticed when I noticed the MAGA influencers who were downplaying the affordability crisis versus the ones who weren't, I noticed a theme. [00:19:41] All of those who were saying there's no affordability crisis, they all supported the Iran War they're all Israel supporters. I don't think that's a coincidence. They know they need the money printer to keep going. [00:19:52] And so they do not care about having some young people not being able to afford gas or they have to eat off a ramen as long as we keep on bombing Iran. [00:20:05] That's what the Republicans do with their money. They also support all the social services that the Democrats have fought for for years. All the ones that the Republicans have opposed over the years, the Republicans pay for when they are in, in charge, every single one of them. And in fact, they typically ask for increases. What do you think the big beautiful bill was last year? It's simply maintaining the status quo of paying for all these social programs that Republicans at one point opposed but now fund and even increase funding for. [00:20:39] It's just gotten to be, you know, they're just Democrats light. We, we, we know that. [00:20:45] And so what we need to do is we need to realize that now, now the, the, the Democrats on their side, we know they spin like crazy. They, they focus mostly on social spending, but they also spend on the military. [00:20:55] They also spend on the military. They don't like, avoid military spending or anything like that. They support these wars just almost, almost as much as Republicans do. And also what's most important is their biggest donors of both parties are typically boomers who, like I said, are doing very well in this economy. [00:21:12] They don't mind because they like the price of their house going up, the value of their house. They like their stock portfolio going up. [00:21:18] The deep state also depends on. They need the money printer going because they need to continue to fund what they do. So the deep state supports it. So basically the whole system supports this. [00:21:32] The rising prices, Rising prices are simply a result of our current system and they cannot be stopped. You could potentially slow down the rise, but you can't stop it. And you definitely can't go back. [00:21:48] I go into detail why this is because first in my book Moral Money, I highly recommend it. I put a link to it in the show notes. Moral Money, the case for Bitcoin. Yes, it is a book about bitcoin, but the whole first part of it is why we need Bitcoin. Because of the problems with the money printer. The problems with inflation. Inflation. Initially, originally what that word meant was the inflation of the money supply, I. E. Money printing. [00:22:13] It didn't mean rising prices. Rising prices is actually a, a, an effect of monetary inflation increasing the money supply. It leads to rising prices. Like I said, there's other reasons for rising prices. As well, but the, the primary one is the, the money printer and the government spending and again, get my book moral money. I'll go into it more depth there. [00:22:40] So we can't vote our way out of this. Some young person who doesn't like the fact we were rising prices. You don't have an option to vote for. That's going to make it better. It will not get better if you vote Republican. [00:22:50] It definitely won't get better if you vote Democrat. Like I said on X the other day, you have two options. You can make things worse by voting Republican or you can make things way, way worse by voting Democrat. Those are really your two options and that's it. [00:23:05] So what can you do? What can young people do? [00:23:10] And I think one thing I do want to say is I, I know I'm going to sound a little bit like a boomer here, a little bit like an older person, but I do think it's important advice. [00:23:19] Don't fall into the victim mentality. Yes, you have been dealt a worse hand than the boomers. You've been dealt a worse hand than my generation has even a worse hand than millennials to some effect, to some extent. But you can't fall into victim mentality because that's spiritually dangerous. It also is what leads people to vote socialist and that's why socialists are becoming more and popular, more and more popular because of the, this victim mentality that you just see yourself as a victim and you want other people to solve your problems for you. You have a problem, but you, you have to solve it now you have a community, hopefully they'll help you solve it. The point is, if you're just saying, saying I'm mad because I have this problem and I expect somebody in Washington to solve it for me, that's what leads to socialism. And that's also very spiritually dangerous because you're not taking agency of your own life. [00:24:09] Lots of people in the world have had worse hands than the baby boomers in America. Lots of people in the world have worse hands than the Gen X in America over history. [00:24:18] And it's not, doesn't mean you have to, it has to be a terrible life or anything like that. You can succeed. I know young people who are succeeding in this economy. And so yes, note the problems. Don't let somebody gas like you to act like no, there isn't really a problem. [00:24:35] But at the same time, don't fall into victim mentality. So what can you do? I think the number one trait you need to have is creativity. What I mean by that is not to be like, creative, like an artist or writer or something like that. What I mean is be creative in thinking of how you can support your family. Talking mostly young men here, but also young single women as well, and maybe women who, you know, young married women who don't have kids yet or something like that, or are looking for some extra income while they take care of the kids. [00:25:04] I think there's some things we have to realize. One is, in my generation, it was assumed if you wanted a decent job and you wanted a good standard living, you had to go to college. You just had to. That is not true anymore. If it was true even in my day, it's definitely not true now. It is simply not true. Don't go to college unless you absolutely have a path forward that you know will lead to economic success. I'm not talking about getting rich. I'm just talking about supporting your family with a decent standard of living. [00:25:35] Don't go to college unless you have a definitive plan. [00:25:38] I would, I would encourage especially young men to go into the trades. Know plumbing, electrician, welding, things like that. [00:25:47] First of all, they're going to be the last jobs are be overtaken by AI. [00:25:52] Oh, I'm losing power. I might. This might be the end of the podcast here in, in. In very, very soon. Oh, there we go again. [00:25:59] I will. If you'll know if this podcast or I'm just going to end it and that's going to be all it is if, if we just are gone. [00:26:08] But also, no college debt. If you go into trades often, you'll get somebody who will pay for your training, in fact, and so you can start making money much sooner and you can invest it and that's a good thing. So I would say go into the trades. I'd also say.