The are no good options for “affordability”

“Affordability” is the new “current thing:”

It’s interesting how certain topics suddenly go viral. Right now, it’s food and the cost of living, but on Sunday and Monday, the focus was on Iran, with Trump declaring another ceasefire (the fifth one now?). I expect attention will swing back to Iran soon, especially if more tankers are attacked, the Strait of Hormuz closes again, or new strikes occur. Once that happens, affordability will fade from the conversation.

Posts denying there’s an “affordability crisis” are getting ratioed hard right now. Here’s an example:

“Affordability” first started gaining traction in late 2025. In a November 8, 2025, post, I predicted that affordability would not improve and would remain a low priority for the administration compared with foreign policy. That prediction looks increasingly prescient given the Iran situation presently and the ousting of Maduro in January 2026.

When people say “Trump ran on affordability” or “Trump ran on being anti-war,” they are only projecting their desires onto him, or are forgetting. He never explicitly ruled out war with Iran, or promised isolationism. Here is how Claude replied when I asked it about Trump “campaigning on ending wars:”

If by “end the wars in Ukraine,” he means continuing to shovel more money there. On July 25, 2025, Trump announced weapons sales of $652 million to Ukraine, on top of $310 million earlier. Tulsi Gabbard declaring “A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to end wars, not start them” is a misreading of Trump’s actual beliefs. War is justified if it creates peace (which it almost never does). This has long been the rationale for war. So “no new wars” could instead be twisted to mean: no prolonged ground wars, but rather short-term military action, which in the case of Iran has now morphed into an actual war.

Even if Trump lied about “no new wars,” why is anyone surprised by this? Since when has the Republican Party ever been anti-war? The 1930s? Have these people been living under a rock or something? These are commenters with large brands who make a living following politics online; being surprised by anything Trump has done about Iran or his inattention towards affordability, they should quit following or commenting on politics and stick to sports or something easier. Here is what I wrote on May 24th, 2026, from the post, “Profiting from Iran and Polymarket:”

It’s as if you vote for “no new wars” and you get wars anyway. Regarding the black pilling, people are so dumb when it comes to politics. Since when was the Republican Party ever anti-war? The 1930s? Just because it’s Trump doesn’t change that. If you’re shook or surprised at what Trump is doing, politics is not for you. Stick to sports or something. But the majority of his supporters, except for a vocal minority online, are agnostic about Iran or support war. This is why Trump’s approval is still in the low 40s. He’s only lost the middle. A similar pattern was seen with Biden during his term. This reflects the general bipartisan dissatisfaction with America’s leadership.

It’s worth keeping in mind that a distinction must be made between the “online right,” as in the screenshot above, and the “offline right,” whose priorities differ. The offline right is mostly just happy that Trump is in power. Their rationale for voting for Trump is that he is not Kamala or Biden, just as in 2016 it was that he was not Hillary. Affordability, Iran, and other individual issues do not factor much into this. They may support a war with Iran, or are indifferent to it.

The online right, by contrast, is a much more vocal minority and is far more focused on specific issues, those now being affordability and Iran. Their loyalty tends to oscillate with the news cycle and the sentiment of their followers, whereas the offline right unconditionally supports Trump. For the former, it’s a top-down process: a prominent influencer(s) sets the tone for the current “cycle” or “thing,” as we are seeing with affordability now.

But going back to affordability, to say “Trump ran on it” is a stretch. It was mentioned a few times, but hardly the cornerstone of his 2023-2024 campaign. Moreover, there is little to no evidence to suggest it’s a deciding factor for voters. In other words, people may gripe about it, but it does not affect their voting patterns. Same for Iran. This is indeed corroborated by Trump’s approval ratings, which only fell 2%, from 38% to 36%, in the 5 months since the Iran war began. This suggests core/offline supporters, by and large, have stuck with Trump.

Moreover, given that CPI has grown at only 3%/year since 2025 vs. 7% under Biden, it’s correct that the inflation situation has improved under Trump, despite affordability also feeling worse. So these two things can both be true. A gradual 3% annual increase in living expenses adds up, especially for expensive things such as healthcare, homes, cars, or tuition. Also, inflation is lumpy or uneven, so CPI does not capture the granularity of the different components, or it ignores other factors such as “shrinkflation” or reduced quality of service (so-called “enshittification”).

There is a solution: Jacking up interest rates and income taxes would create deflation and reduce living expenses, but at the cost of unemployment and recession. There is no way to have it both ways, of reducing the cost of living without also creating a worse problem. The main problem is that the marketplace has revealed what people are willing and capable of paying. Corporations can thus price their goods accordingly. Every time there is some justification, such as the 2021-2022 supply chain disruptions or now with tariffs, companies ratchet up prices, and then keep them high after the problem subsides.

The non-recession solutions are both bad or impractical, those being price controls or companies reducing the cost of inputs. The latter won’t work if there is inflation there, too. Companies are not going to voluntarily reduce profits when people, as demonstrated by their consumption habits, are willing to pay more. Price controls are inherently “un-American” and lead back to the “solution being worse than the problem.”

Technological deflation and “free market competition” is also a solution (e.g., for TVs and personal computers), but dining out, real estate, or healthcare are labor-intensive or scarce, and the deflationary effect of technology does not apply as well. Car technology has improved markedly over the past 120 years, and there are dozens of car manufacturers competing with each other, yet cars are still expensive adjusted for inflation, unlike TVs. So technology cannot necessarily be counted as a savior.

This is not to dismiss concerns about inflation or cost of living. It’s real, and being an exponential process, it adds up quickly over time, especially for expensive items, and is felt especially hard if wages do not keep up. This is why stocks or real estate are the only reliable hedges to preserve wealth (crypto sucks and clearly failed as a hedge, and so have bonds). But it’s wrong to say “Trump voters are irate” about Iran or affordability. A vocal minority online are, but most are indifferent.