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Affordability & Prices blog
Match first or card first? A worksheet for splitting spare dollarsWhether the 401(k) match or the credit card comes first is arithmetic, not a feeling. A worked example with exact numbers and a worksheet you can copy.Three households and one grocery bill, budget scenarios when prices jumpA 10 percent jump in food and energy lands differently on a renting couple, a retired pair and a one-income family. Here is the exact arithmetic for each.Price gouging laws sound fair and then the shelves go emptyA cap on prices after a disaster feels fair, but a capped price removes the reason to bring more ice. The record from Rome to 1981, and what actually helps.I, Pencil and the price system, how nobody plans your breakfastNobody on earth knows how to make a pencil, yet millions are made. Prices carry knowledge no planner can gather, and that is why markets feed us.Zoning may be the biggest price control you never got to vote onLocal land-use rules cap how much housing gets built, and a cap on supply is a price control by another name. Here is the case, the objection and the fix.Why family policy should not punish the parent who stays homeChild-care subsidies and credits reward families who buy care and ignore families who give it. The fix is neutrality between the choices parents make.Who really pays a tariff, following the dollar from dock to shelfThe importer writes the check, but the burden spreads. Follow a hypothetical $100 part through three cases, then weigh the case for tariffs against the cost.Should the child credit pay families who don't work? The 2021 argumentThe best case for the 2021 child credit expansion, and the conservative answer about work, the EITC, the 1996 reform and a fair test for any family credit.How the CPI is built and why it never matches your grocery receiptThe Consumer Price Index prices an average basket for an average household. Here is how it is built, what it misses, and why your own inflation rate differs.Inflation is the one tax that never needs a vote in CongressInflation moves buying power from savers and wage earners to the biggest debtor in the country, and no member of Congress ever has to vote for it.Eight Myths About Farm Subsidies That Both Parties Keep RepeatingThe left and the right argue about farm programs with slogans. Eight claims tested against how the farm bill is built and what USDA itself reports.Trace Your Family's Energy Dollar From the Meter and Pump to the Grocery BillA step-by-step worksheet that adds your electric, gas, gasoline and the energy hidden in groceries, with every sum shown on invented round numbers.Thomas Sowell Asks What Happens After the Policy PassesSowell's three questions, compared with what a bill promises, show why good intentions are not a result. Three policies tested, including two from the right.Eight Days Into His Term, Reagan Scrapped Oil Price Controls for GoodA decade of federal price-fixing gave America shortages and gas lines, and one executive order on January 28, 1981 ended it. Here is how it came and went.