Following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, gas prices, grocery bills and mortgage rates have all climbed
The US-Israel war against Iran has sent shockwaves through global markets, leaving many Americans grappling with a growing financial squeeze on everyday living costs.
Following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran – prompting retaliatory attacks on US allies in the region and Iran’s decision to close the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime passage – costs have surged across the US. Gas prices, in particular, have spiked sharply, with the national average rising by roughly 30% over the past month. Grocery bills, mortgage rates and fertilizer costs have also climbed.
Now, many Americans are being forced to reassess their finances and cut back drastically on basic necessities such as food, clothing and electricity.
Not just America: it’s pretty much the same in all those countries with economies were Services are a 70%+ proportion.
If most of the Economy isn’t actually creating health but rather in being an intermediary between producers and users (sales, distribution), distracting people (social media, TV, a lot of the Press), slight efficiency improvements, capital usage tweaks or even just bypassing inefficiencies in the actual economic system (most services sold to businesses, outsourcing) and extracting rents from merelly holding wealth or resources which can’t be reproduced (realestate, finance), the production of real value which allows people in such economies of “sitting in the middle and take a cut” to survive must come from somewhere else.
So at least most of Europe as well as Japan have the same disfunctional economic structure as the US and people there are also self-deluded in thinking that higher stock or house prices is a wealthier economy, though maybe not quite as thoroughly deluded as in the US.