Inflation numbers are out. Living costs are decreasing, but that does not mean things are cheaper. It just means things are not getting more expensive as quickly as they were. The cost of living is still high, and rental and mortgage prices continue to rise. During these times, the Biden administration has found a new target for their ire: airplane bathrooms.
Over the past few years, morbidly obese and mentally ill TikTok "influencers" have raised a ruckus on airplanes because the aisles are not wide enough, the seats are not big enough, and the bathrooms are not expansive enough for them. In the past few years, airlines have made bathrooms uncomfortably small. But they did so for a specific reason: They needed more seats.
Every seat added to a plane is a reduction in price for travelers. In the '70s and early '80s, only the rich and business travelers could afford to fly. People dressed up. Meals were served. It was an experience and one that cost a pretty penny. Today, thanks to former President Ronald Reagan's deregulation plans, air travel has been democratized. It is more cramped. It is more crowded. It has few amenities. But a family of four can now take a trip without taking out a second mortgage. The trade-offs have reduced ticket prices.
The Biden administration, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the frontwoman, wants to mandate larger bathrooms for the small contingent of inconvenienced TikTok influencers of America. Doing so will price the middle class out of air travel. It is all part of the plan. The Biden administration and the Left, in general, are at war with the middle class.
If you want your child educated in much of America now, you must pay for private school or quit your job to home-school. At the government schools you are already paying for, the teacher's unions, when not shutting them down, have filled elementary school libraries with gay pornography. Teachers are teaching gender unicorns. Gone are the ABCs, and in are the LGBTQs. One plus one no longer equals two because that would be white supremacy, like proper grammar, the Founding Fathers and the United States generally. Washington politicians lament that our kids are not keeping up but are more insistent on them learning about gender transitions than sentence transitions.
At the grocery store, food costs are up. For years, the government has told us to shop the outer aisles with the least processed food, i.e., vegetables, fruit, meats, and dairy. Now, the government wants to push you toward lab-grown chickens and synthetic-hemoglobin-filled plant-based "meat" -- so long as you do not cook them on a gas stove.
Driving to work is more expensive. While energy prices are down year over year, they are still too high. The Biden administration intends to force everyone into electric cars by 2030. To do so, they consciously make gas-powered cars more expensive and problematic. A large family is hard-pressed now to find a large car because the Left has advanced every incentive to keep a family small, including pricing large cars out of the market for most. A used car even costs too much now.
Like the costs of airplane tickets going up to expand bathrooms for the morbidly obese, the Biden administration's plan for electric cars would force Americans to stay put. One cannot plan a week's vacation across America when you have to add extra charging hours for the car.
Everything is more expensive by design. Everything else is more inconvenient by design. A dishwasher takes over two hours to wash the dishes. Appliances are more prone to failure. The power grid fails more often and does not even work when the wind does not blow, and the sun does not shine. It is all the logical and intentional outcome of progressive policy at work.
By burdening your life, driving up your costs, and inconveniencing your family, the Left, via the Biden administration, hopes you travel less, eat less and have fewer kids. The kids you have will be secretly transitioned and, they hope, sterilized to produce fewer humans. The middle class will lose, but the Left will have saved Mother Earth.
To learn more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.