Excuse or Reason?

“LIMIT 1”

What is an excuse? Dictionary definitions: 

• "a reason or explanation put forward to defend or justify a fault or offense." 
• "a reason put forward to conceal the real reason for an action; a pretext."
• "something offered as justification or as grounds for being excused."

What is a reason? Dictionary definitions: 

• "a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event." 
• "a statement or fact that explains why something is the way it is, why someone does, thinks, or says something, or why someone behaves a certain way."

I thought about this distinction when I read a comment on my posts about high grocery prices: "Yada, yada – getting quite tired (as most of us are) about the excuses for consistently rising prices of everything." 

This comment implies that there might be a facile explanation for the high cost of goods today: it's somebody's fault and they are covering up with excuses. Is there an entity somewhere that has responsibility for prices? Is someone hiding why the authorities (whoever they are) don't just fix the situation? When something is called "an excuse" there's a suggestion that no real causes and effects are involved. I wonder, is there supposedly someone who could simply restore conditions at the grocery store to what they were two years ago? Who is responsible for empty shelves, higher prices, and difficulties all along the supply chain? Who is to blame for current inflation being at a 40 year high point? Why is there a high increase in the Consumer Price Index? Because commodities and finished products are produced and consumed globally, prices have global as well as national causes. Critical imports particularly come to the US from Mexico, Canada, and China. So inflation is not simply due to events or policies in the US.

I searched for explanations of rising prices other than simply inflation. For starters, sudden increase in demand as the pandemic started resulted in higher prices for some types of goods (and drove down other prices but nobody mentions this). This isn't an so much an excuse, it's more of an economic principle about supply and demand, as I understand it. 

Look at these details about a few specific commodities and what is driving their prices –

• Toilet paper? Like almost all household paper products, it's made of wood pulp, which is scarce now, due to shipping and labor issues. So prices have gone up, and panic buying in April 2020 and in September 2021 also caused some retailers to limit purchases.
• Lumber?  Along with many other building materials, big increases in demand were driven by home repair increases during the pandemic, resulting in big price increases. In addition, lumber prices rose because of forest fires, labor shortages due to covid, and overseas shipping issues. In the fall of 2021, prices dropped, but in December they again increased enormously. (Interesting article here)
• Oranges? They are scarce now especially because groves in Florida are experiencing cold temperatures and diseases of the trees. Harvests are dramatically lower, so orange juice prices are going up.
• Avocados? The price recently doubled. Right now, a threat to a US inspector of avocados in Mexico has caused cessation of all avocado imports from Mexico; that is, almost all the avocados we eat.  So without credible assurance that US inspectors are protected from Mexican organized crime, there will soon be no avocados available here at any price. It's a developing situation, changing even since I mentioned it a few days ago.
• Cocoa, Coffee, Bananas, Vanilla, Tea? All are agricultural imports with various risks from shipping problems, plant diseases, climate change, labor issues including workers infected with covid, political unrest in producer countries, and more. 
• Meat? Costs throughout the entire US meat industry have gone up. The price of chemical fertilizer to grow cattle feed is going up. The number of cattle available to be sold for slaughter is low; there are fewer animals now because of abrupt interruption of cattle ranching at the start of the pandemic. Availability of labor in meat processing plants has been reduced by employee illness during the pandemic (also employer cruelty). Costs of meat-packaging materials like styrofoam trays and wraps has increased. Transporting meat from the processor to the supermarket costs more. Supermarket costs and labor availability are also affected by covid and inflation.
• Gasoline? The price of gas depends on global supplies (which might be hit by a war in Ukraine next week). The price is affected by oil pipeline capacity, by refinery capacity, by weather disruptions like hurricanes, and by local gas station conditions. Vastly decreased demand for gas during the coronavirus lockdowns caused price reductions; as lockdowns end, demand goes up so prices go up.
• Cars, clothing, household utilities, houses for sale or rent, appliances, restaurant meals, snacks, furniture, electronics? Prices of these essentials are all driven upward by increased demand and reduced supplies. A few causes: shipping delays, shortages of electronic components, covid recovery problems in China where many key commodities are manufactured, and labor scarcity.

Maybe it's a mystery, whether price increases have identifiable causes or are created by some sort of conspiracy or ineptitude. When I look for solid evidence about prices rising, though, I feel as if I'm being provided with some solid causes, many resulting from the vast number of working people who had covid, others going back to climate change, still others from various specific events. 

Once I started down this rabbit hole, reading articles about shortages and inflation, I couldn't stop, so forgive me for my amateur wanderings in economic theory. I'm no good at this.

Economist Paul Krugman (a real expert with a Nobel Prize!) writes about economics in the New York Times. Recently, he discussed the way people get their news and form their economic beliefs. He pointed out that the right wing is being primed by sources like Fox News and worse, to believe that the economy is terrible and it's the government's fault. He says: "a substantial part of the electorate has economic perceptions quite far from reality; even if things improve, they probably won’t hear about the good news or will be regaled with other negative stories." (source)