Commentary by Rich Corbett

The midterm elections are around the corner and “affordability” is on everyone’s mind. Look past the pump for a moment and the American economy is still doing something most of the world would trade for: It is employing people and paying them more.

The unemployment rate in September was 4.2%. That’s not a boom-time 3.5%, but it is a tight labor market by any historical standard. Payrolls added 162,000 jobs last month. Average hourly earnings for private workers reached $37.75, up from $36.62 a year earlier. Nominal pay is still climbing. Headline inflation is 3.4%; core inflation, which strips food and energy, is 2.4%. Energy is the ugly piece — up more than 16% over the year —  which is why the sticker shock at the pump and the diesel island feels worse than the core number. 

The political left will focus on the price of gasoline and diesel. Fair enough. They offer few solutions that do not amount to more central control: Price fixing, rent control and “free everything.” Freedom-loving, common sense voters have watched that experiment. It does not raise the living standards where it has been tried. 

Let’s be honest. Affordability is real. Housing is still too expensive in most metro areas. Grocery prices never fully came down from the Biden-era spike, even if the annual rate of food inflation has cooled. Childcare and insurance chew through paychecks. A US Conference of Mayors survey this week found nearly every mayor saying residents are “very or extremely concerned” about costs. Consumer sentiment has been bouncing around near multi-decade lows for a reason. The squeeze is not imaginary. 

The midterm question is what you do with that fact.

You can treat a sharp oil spike — driven by geopolitics: Russia and Ukraine, Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel and the confrontation with Iran — as proof this administration has failed. Or you can notice that the United States is absorbing the shock better than most countries while trying to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of a regime that chants “Death to America.” No one gets a clean receipt that says the price at the pump was “worth it.” That is a judgment about risk, not a CPI footnote.

The path in front of us is the current one: keep economic pressure on Iran, defend allies and US bases and produce more energy in places that are not under immediate threat — including, yes, cleaner sources where the market can actually deliver them. Efficiency comes from markets, innovation and competition. Those used to be shared assumptions of Republican and Democratic leadership. They are not the programs being sold by DSA-aligned candidates now making inroads in the Democratic Party. 

Ride out the pain at the pump a little longer with eyes open. There is still no better place to ride out a messy world than the United States. The numbers, even the uncomfortable ones, beat the alternative: A weaker economy, a weaker dollar, weaker hiring, higher taxes and a political class that treats production as a moral problem and central control as the answer. Most of us already know better. 

Corbett is a contributing pundit to The Hustings and writer/editor/publisher of  mydesultoryblog.com.