By the second week of March, every receipt tells the same story. A bag of groceries costs more than it did a month ago. A fill-up leaves the needle lower for the same money. Lines at the discount aisle grow longer.
Inflation used to be a headline. Now it’s a household fight. A mother tells her kids no to soda. A retiree counts out coins for bread. A worker calculates whether the extra shift will even cover the cost of commuting. Small humiliations stack up, and with them, frustration.
Economists argue about causes: war in Europe, supply bottlenecks, corporate profiteering. People here don’t care which chart proves the point. They care that the checkout total doesn’t match the paycheck. That’s what drains faith.
Neighbors improvise: swapping garden vegetables, splitting Costco runs, stretching church food pantries. These gestures don’t solve the problem, but they keep families afloat. That’s resilience. But resilience without repair is just managed decline, and towns know it.
The test ahead isn’t whether households endure another price hike. It’s whether leaders treat endurance as an excuse to delay fixing what’s broken.