Sixty years ago, I purchased my first home for our young family of four for $21,000. It had three bedrooms, two baths, 2,100 square feet, and was in a very nice Dallas neighborhood. Today that home is valued at $630,000! To buy that home today, a buyer would need an annual income of $125,000 to $200,000! I can assure you that at the beginning of my business career in 1966, I did not earn anywhere near either amount.
This simple example highlights the magnitude to which government-sponsored inflation has affected ‘affordability’, the key 2026 midterm election issue which could cause the Republicans to lose their Congressional majorities. Also, because a new administration begins with the higher prices levels from the previous administration, our continually rising prices have historically made it difficult for new administrations to win their first midterm elections and maintain the Congressional majorities they won in the previous presidential election.
(NOTE: Uniformed voters believe and most politicians talk as if when inflation is reduced the price level goes back to a level before inflation occurred. Wrong, only the rate at which aggregate price levels increase decreases – with the exception of special inflation situations such as shortages caused by conflicts or other special supply/demand situations!)
The inflation added to consumer price levels can be offset if average wages rise faster than consumer prices. The Republicans took office with a poorly operating economy because, over the previous four years of the Biden Administration, the Consumer Price Index climbed 21.0 percent, while real wages, adjusted for inflation, fell 1.5 percent. As a result, Republicans started 2025 behind this wage/price curve from day one!
Trump Administration policies slowed inflation-driven price increases from the Biden years. The new administration modestly increased real wage growth, but many consumers were still behind the wage/price curve, and everyone was paying more for almost everything. Note that the Federal Reserve, which has charge of our economy’s interest rates, targets 2 percent inflation annually, which is ever increasing prices. This means if wages do not increase at that rate, a consumer automatically loses consumable income.
Incidentally, in this long-term, government-sponsored inflation, wage increases always lag price increases. After all, The Fed must help our elected officials pay, with inflated dollars, for massive $40 trillion debt they have incurred to purchase their effective 95 percent reelection rate!
This explanation is too long for winning campaign ads, but most voters understand whether their wages and take-home pay go up or down because of taxes, and they all look forward to getting paid more money. Rather than trying to explain how Republicans plan to decrease inflation (prices), which seldom decreases overall, their midterm strategy should be to emphasize Republican policies that put more money in their paychecks. These Republican policies, that are already beginning to work in less than two years, include:
- Stimulating new investments that are building new plants that will hire well-paid workers
- Stimulating the building of new plants, hiring highly paid construction workers
- Reducing the number of immigrants entering the workforce that lower domestic wages
- Reduced tax levels in the Big Beautiful Tax Bill, including tips and overtime, increasing take-home pay.
- Democrats vote consistently to raise their taxes.
- Democrats added 10 to 12 million low-wage workers in four years to compete with them for jobs and lower their hourly compensation.
The above should also stabilize or increase the Republican gains in the Black and Hispanic communities, whose number voting for them increased substantially in the 2025 presidential election.
When Republicans discuss inflation, they should acknowledge that, given Feb’s long-term 2 percent annual inflation policy, inflation is impossible to decrease completely. But the message should be that inflation adds cumulatively to consumer price levels, never comes down, and that Republican wage-growth policies will balance their finances again.
Democrats learned during the Clinton Administration that it’s the economy, Stupid! Republicans should realize they own this issue – they must learn how to take charge of the economy as their own – it’s Economics 101, Stupid!
TW3
October 8, 2026
John Whitmore Jenkins
www.jenkins-speaks.com
john@jenkins-speaks.com
