Washington leaves working families behind as prices soar

By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit · November 1, 2026

As midterm voters confront crushing living costs, Washington politicians protect corporate donors and leave working families to bear the fallout of a rigged economy.

A broken system leaves ordinary people behind

Seventy-four per cent of Americans rate the economy as poor, according to CNN reporting. That matches the despair we felt back in 2009 when the foreclosure notices first started piling up on front porches in Flint. Voters head to the polls on Tuesday with life simply being too expensive, as The Washington Post notes. General prices have grown at faster rates than wages, as reported by The Globe and Mail. The Federal Reserve raised benchmark interest rates in September, punishing ordinary borrowers while corporate profit margins stay fat.

We are told by defenders of the status quo that the stock market is booming, as Dr Stephanie Hoopes noted in reporting by The Guardian. But official statistics hide the truth. A report by United for Alice found that 41.3 per cent of United States households faced financial hardship. That includes families earning under the federal poverty level threshold, alongside households classified as asset limited, income constrained and employed, or ALICE. They earn above poverty yet cannot afford basic expenses in their county.

This is the exact same predatory squeeze that defined the financial crisis of 2007–2008 (2007–2009). Reckless speculation crashed the housing market and left working people homeless while Wall Street received multibillion-dollar bailouts. Then, as now, the costs of elite failure landed squarely on zip codes like mine.

The oil shock and the cost of survival

The crisis is painfully visible in the everyday struggle for basic necessities. The average price of groceries has increased 33 per cent, according to data outlined in The Globe and Mail. Ground beef averaged $6.79 per pound in September.

This economic suffering mirrors the 1973 oil crisis, where geopolitical conflict weaponized energy costs to trigger a cost-of-living shock that crushed household budgets. Today, Donald Trump's tariffs and a months-long U.S. war with Iran have put upward pressure on inflation. Crude oil benchmarks remain at or in excess of US$100 a barrel. National average gas prices increased to US$4.5 per gallon in September. Corey Goodhue, an Iowa corn and soybean farmer interviewed by CNN, faces over-budget diesel costs and confesses that inflation got him.

When energy prices spike like this, working families pay the toll. Shunda Whitfield, a certified nursing assistant in St. Louis with lupus, told The Guardian she sometimes has to choose between getting her medication or buying groceries because her medicine is going up. Meanwhile, public sector workers are striking for a living wage. Gina Jones and her co-workers at Lorain County Job and Family Services in Ohio have been on strike since February in the longest public sector strike in Ohio history. While starting pay hovers around $15 an hour, their family health insurance costs are jumping to a projected $600 a month in January for the exact same coverage.

Washington looks away from the kitchen table

Washington politicians of both parties love to talk about the middle class during campaign season, but their policies prove they serve only the donor class. A Pew Research Center study conducted this fall found that 44 per cent of Americans had trouble paying for at least one basic necessity in the past year. Feeding America reported about 48 million people lived in food insecure households, and nearly half of those experiencing food insecurity had incomes too high to qualify for social support programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The strongest opposing case made by defenders of the current economic order is that inflation is a global phenomenon driven by pandemic-era supply chain disruptions and foreign conflicts beyond any president's control, and that aggressive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve are necessary medicine to cool an overheating economy without triggering a deeper depression. But this argument crumbles when examined against the facts. The inflation hurting working people is relentlessly exacerbated by deliberate policy choices like regressive tariffs, corporate price-gouging, and state refusals to expand Medicaid. When the administration imposes auto tariffs or slaps duties on wind turbine parts, it is choosing to tax working families. When pharmaceutical executives and corporate landlords squeeze every last dollar out of tenants and patients, they do so because our laws let them.

Jolene Simecek saw her rent in Cleveland jump from $785 to nearly $1,600, asking CNN why more people aren't mad. Phebie White in Tampa saw her rent increase to $1,250 on a fixed Social Security income that fails to keep pace. She keeps her car insurance paid just in case she needs to sleep in her vehicle. Sheila Scarborough, a veteran in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, slept in her car most nights in the summer after the city cut her power. As Sheila told CNN, nobody is listening.

Working people in America do not need another election cycle of empty promises from politicians who have never worried about the price of milk or insulin. Justice requires a government that takes on corporate greed, caps runaway rents, delivers Medicare for All, and makes billionaires pay taxes at the exact same rate as the corner hardware store. Until our leaders govern for the union hall instead of Wall Street, working families will keep paying the price for a rigged economy.

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US consumer price index. Source: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED).

Washington leaves working families behind as prices soar

A broken system leaves ordinary people behind

The oil shock and the cost of survival

Washington looks away from the kitchen table

Sources