La Voz de Galicia – February 3, 2023 →
Over the last few days, every time that I’ve gone to the supermarket to buy eggs, I’ve seen a sign that read «Due to the shortage of eggs, only to two cartons are allowed per customer,» and even with this limit, I’ve never gotten to buy them because by the time I’ve gone shopping at the end of the day, there were none left. The matter is that in the US, the price of eggs has also increased radically due to, among other things, bird flu and inflation. And it is precisely because of this that over the past few days American media is talking about «eggflation.» And it is curious, but for a person like me, for whom numbers, the economy, and money do not come easily, reading about «eggflation» was much more illuminating than directly learning about inflation. I have spent months trying to understand inflation, its origin, its consequences, and what those percentages that come out every day in the media mean; trying to understand why I pay almost double what I paid almost a year ago in my weekly grocery shopping. And suddenly, an explanation about the price and the shortage of eggs in the US made me (if for a moment) be able to take on again my goal of understanding inflation through these eggs, as metaphoric as they are real…At the same time, it is sometimes impossible to give sense to things that we can’t control, and no matter how frequently I read the RAG’s definition of the word inflation: «Situation or phenomenon consisting of a general and continuous increase usually caused by the excessive increase in capital and circulating currency,» the only thing I am able to understand well is that it will be with us for more time than we can allow ourselves to live with it…
