The Matt Walsh Show - August 03, 2026


Ep. 1815 - The Hidden Reasons Why Grocery Prices Are Still Rising


Episode Stats


Length

43 minutes

Words per minute

175.48

Word count

7,674

Sentence count

449


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.480 Recently, our company's softball team lost the big game by one run.
00:00:04.800 Then Dale tried to console us with the quote,
00:00:07.200 winning isn't everything.
00:00:09.060 Well, Dale and I are very different.
00:00:12.740 I get early payout from Bet365.
00:00:14.680 If my team goes up big, I get paid out instantly,
00:00:17.480 even if they blow the lead later.
00:00:19.540 Sound familiar, Dale?
00:00:21.280 Thanks, Bet365.
00:00:22.920 Must be 19 or older, Ontario only.
00:00:24.420 Please play responsibly.
00:00:25.240 If you have questions or concerns about your gambling
00:00:26.660 or the gambling of someone close to you,
00:00:27.720 please go to connexontario.ca TNC Supply.
00:00:30.000 Just a couple of years ago that the price of eggs was the single most important issue in American politics, and for good reason.
00:00:36.360 When a dozen eggs cost nearly $8, it's not easy to make the case that the economy is fine or that we're still a first world country even.
00:00:44.680 It's also difficult to convince people to hold on to power, which is why Donald Trump hammered the issue at every opportunity.
00:00:50.460 Even if Democrats hadn't nominated a dementia patient and an alcoholic in the same year, there's a good chance that all by itself the price of eggs would have sunk the party.
00:01:00.000 A couple of years later, there's some good news and some bad news.
00:01:03.880 The good news is that the price of eggs has returned to earth.
00:01:07.000 Retail egg prices are now around 40 percent lower than they were in June of last year.
00:01:11.760 And they're continuing to decline every month.
00:01:14.220 So problem solved on that front, I guess.
00:01:17.460 There's evidently no more bird flu to worry about.
00:01:19.900 And people can once again cook breakfast or at least part of breakfast.
00:01:24.160 The bad news is that the price of basically all of the other groceries in your refrigerator has been going in the opposite direction.
00:01:31.480 And I'm not just talking about a small increase here.
00:01:34.520 As you've probably noticed, it's very significant across the board, but it's probably even worse than you realize.
00:01:40.700 So here are some hard numbers to give some historical context.
00:01:43.440 This is from the New York Post.
00:01:44.760 Quote, food prices in the U.S. have shot up by 33 percent over the last seven years.
00:01:49.460 the biggest jump in grocery prices in half a century, with no relief in sight. While rampant
00:01:54.620 inflation was to blame for the biggest surge during the pandemic, prices have continued to
00:01:58.960 soar since, with ground beef best demonstrating the out-of-control market as it hit $6.82 a pound
00:02:04.840 in June, a 79% increase from 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now,
00:02:12.300 a big part of the reason why beef is so expensive is that the supply of cattle has dwindled by some
00:02:17.200 estimates to its lowest levels in many decades. And that's in part because of years of droughts,
00:02:22.500 which have killed the grass that keeps the cattle fed. And we'll talk more about the root causes in
00:02:27.440 a moment because obviously it's very important, but beef is not the only problem. Food prices
00:02:31.480 in general increased by more than 2% in 2024, nearly 3% in 2025. And food purchased away from
00:02:38.660 home at restaurants and drive-thrus, for example, has been even worse. So-called food away from home
00:02:44.440 prices increased by roughly four percent in both 2024 and 25, which is much faster than the
00:02:50.020 historical average. And all of these increases, of course, are stacked on top of the previous
00:02:55.340 increases. So it's a compounding problem. New York Post article continues, quote, between 2012 and
00:03:01.420 2019, the U.S. saw a total increase in food prices of just 6.4 percent, with the cost skyrocketing
00:03:07.540 once the pandemic hit in the early months of 2020, following the pandemic's damaging effects
00:03:11.700 between January 21 and January 23, food prices surged by about 21 percent, and costs have
00:03:18.680 continued to go up by nearly 10 percent. It's yet more evidence demonstrating that the COVID
00:03:24.220 lockdowns ruined everything. The lockdowns had second-order effects that no one in power
00:03:31.600 considered at the time, or at least they didn't care about, even though they were obvious to
00:03:36.820 anyone who'd ever worked a real job. But before we get into all of those second-order effects,
00:03:40.800 and there are a lot of them, and how our leaders caused this crisis. The most important takeaway
00:03:45.480 here is that food prices are worse than they've been in memory. And this is not merely a political
00:03:51.120 problem. You know, it's not simply bad for Republicans in the midterms, just like the
00:03:55.640 price of eggs was bad for Kamala Harris in 2024. History shows that when food becomes harder to
00:04:01.600 obtain, people get restless and they get angry very quickly. If you, you know, drew up a list
00:04:09.440 of every revolution that ever took place. By far, the number one cause is that, or one of the number
00:04:16.000 one contributing factors anyway, is that food suddenly became too scarce or too expensive.
00:04:23.140 Now, it doesn't matter where you look, from France to Russia to Africa to Europe,
00:04:28.160 imperial China, in every single region, in every single era, people have had a rather strong and
00:04:33.540 understandable desire to eat and feed their families affordably. Prevent them from doing so
00:04:40.660 or make it considerably more expensive and difficult for them to do so, and you will have
00:04:45.060 created a powder keg situation, and the worst people in the world will be ready to take advantage.
00:04:50.920 In their desperation, the citizenry won't hesitate to vote for charismatic foreign-born socialists
00:04:57.220 who promise to resolve the food shortages, even though everybody with a grade school education
00:05:01.700 understands that socialism is how you cause food shortages, not how you solve them. Socialist
00:05:08.420 leaders won't merely make things worse. They will destroy the country, which, of course, is their
00:05:13.860 goal. This is not a hypothetical scenario. In New York, Zoran Mamdani just announced that five
00:05:19.580 city-owned grocery stores will be open by 2029, with the first one opening by the end of next
00:05:25.620 year. Now, he promised that the stores would simply set prices so that they're 30% lower
00:05:31.380 than you can find anywhere else, so that's the plan. Yes, the government is going to implement
00:05:36.860 Soviet-style price-fixing and undercut the market by running and subsidizing its own grocery stores.
00:05:44.020 The discount will apply to, quote, all fresh produce, meat, and seafood, along with roughly
00:05:47.840 20 additional categories of pantry staples, dairy, and refrigerated goods. Everyone will be able to
00:05:53.740 access the discount without regard for income. The mayor's office says that combined, the savings
00:05:59.300 are projected to cut New Yorker's average grocery bill by 15 percent, about $90 a month or roughly
00:06:05.380 $1,000 a year, allegedly. Watch. Today, I am proud to announce a collection of essential staples
00:06:14.480 that will be predictably 30 percent cheaper at all five of our city-run grocery stores.
00:06:20.240 this core set of goods will include all fresh produce meat and seafood along with 20 other
00:06:31.120 essential items like cheese milk and bread here's how it will work once a month our five city run
00:06:37.600 grocery stores will set prices for this core set of goods at 30 below typical retail prices
00:06:42.880 no exceptions no gimmicks the savings will last for the entire month that means no weekly
00:06:49.180 fluctuations nor sticker shock at the checkout line. Not for our seniors living on fixed incomes
00:06:54.620 nor for the parents who rely on a regular supply of apple slices to keep toddler tantrums at bay.
00:07:04.460 Can we all see this incredible example of produce in my hand? Now you will see these
00:07:11.580 plantains here so for anyone wondering how much these beautiful plantains might cost
00:07:15.260 you can use this QR code or head to grocery.nyc to access our policy report.
00:07:21.860 I'm going to demonstrate exactly what that means.
00:07:28.740 Ladies and gentlemen, the QR code does work.
00:07:32.340 You can see this here.
00:07:37.360 Wow, it's so simple.
00:07:38.860 You know, just set the prices to 30% cheaper than, well, he doesn't say exactly,
00:07:44.600 but 30% cheaper than anything else we can assume, it's ingenious. I mean, if stuff is too expensive,
00:07:52.020 just have the government come in and require that stuff be not too expensive. Why didn't anyone else
00:07:57.880 think of that? I mean, other than the Soviets and the Cubans and the Romanians and the Vietnamese
00:08:02.080 and the Cambodians and the Ethiopians and every other third world population that's ever existed,
00:08:06.760 aside from all that, this is a truly novel idea. While we're at it, why does the government just
00:08:12.680 take over every industry and undercut the market by 30%. In fact, why stop there? I mean, why not
00:08:17.400 undercut the market by 50%? Why not 75%? Why not 99%? Why not 100%? Why not give everything away
00:08:24.380 for free? Imagine a city-run Apple store or a city-run Porsche dealership. You know, just walk
00:08:30.800 in and buy a luxury vehicle for 10 bucks. Nobody should ever have to pay more than $10 for a
00:08:37.600 vehicle? I mean, that's a human rights violation. If cars cost more than $10, just make them be less
00:08:45.060 than $10. Pass a law saying they're not allowed to be more than $10. Problem solved. Who could
00:08:52.700 possibly complain? Now, this is the extent of the logic on display here. To call it childlike would
00:08:58.700 be an insult to children. I mean, really, the historical comparisons to other countries aren't
00:09:03.720 even relevant. You don't need to study other countries to understand on its face how disastrous
00:09:08.140 this will be. If you think for a second that this is a good idea, then just you should immediately
00:09:14.580 self-deport to other countries that are already governed like this. Go visit Cuba sometime,
00:09:19.980 where a $10 tip is more than most people make in an entire month. Okay, but, and by the way,
00:09:25.460 as the National Review pointed out, Mamdani was holding up some bananas, plantains, or whatever,
00:09:30.320 during that press conference. A banana currently goes for 23 cents at Trader Joe's in Manhattan,
00:09:35.680 so he picked maybe the least expensive food item in any grocery store to illustrate why we need
00:09:39.960 state-run grocery stores. And there's no universe in which 23-cent bananas could possibly be
00:09:45.060 difficult for anyone to afford in New York, especially given that everybody in the city
00:09:48.540 is on some form of welfare anyway. But we're supposed to pretend otherwise. I mean, he's
00:09:53.920 legitimately trying to make the case that if New Yorkers only have to pay 16 cents per banana instead
00:09:59.100 of 23% because other New Yorkers are being forced to subsidize the cost of bananas, then somehow
00:10:04.620 life is going to get, you know, a lot more affordable. Well, the exact opposite is true.
00:10:09.840 You know, bananas, like virtually every item in the grocery store, with the exception of alcohol
00:10:13.680 and lottery tickets, are extremely low margin items. The typical net profit margin on purchases
00:10:20.720 at a grocery store is between 1% and 3%, and bananas are no exception. If the government
00:10:25.480 opens up enough of its own stores where everything is subsidized by taxpayers, then the existing
00:10:30.400 grocery stores, including the crappy ones, which they call bodegas in New York, will be unable to
00:10:36.880 compete. People will stop buying the more expensive bananas when a subsidized option is available,
00:10:41.300 which means before long, bananas will become much harder to find outside Mamdani marts.
00:10:46.700 Privately owned stores will have no reason to sell them anymore. And then, because the only
00:10:50.640 place to get bananas will be the Mamdani marts before long, as this process repeats with every
00:10:55.280 other grocery item, the lines will stretch out to the street, just like they did in the Soviet
00:11:00.760 Union. Now, the only argument in defense of Mamdani's plan is that it's limited to five
00:11:06.740 grocery stores at the moment. By themselves, these stores won't serve enough customers to
00:11:11.560 destroy the market for food in New York. And this is always the best possible argument for any
00:11:16.620 left-wing policy, by the way. The best argument is always that the policy won't be as destructive
00:11:22.400 as everyone thinks, which means even the best argument still acknowledges that the policy
00:11:28.440 will be destructive to some extent. And in this case, the hope is that people will see lines
00:11:33.920 going out the door, they'll see the homeless people doing drugs in every aisle, and they'll
00:11:37.480 notice that the shelves are empty all the time and everything is mismanaged. And, you know,
00:11:41.640 they'll just go back to Trader Joe's. But if Mamdani's program expands, which is obviously
00:11:45.320 the long-term goal, that's the long-term goal with any government program, is to expand,
00:11:50.940 then the result will be catastrophic. And that's not even getting into what will happen if the
00:11:56.660 subsidies run out, meaning if the few remaining taxpayers in New York decide to stop funding this
00:12:01.380 insanity and leave the city. At a certain point, a death spiral begins and it's impossible to pull
00:12:08.620 out of it. Now, of course, socialists, particularly the female and foreign-born Mamdani supporters,
00:12:15.220 reject all of these complaints. They're convinced that Mamdani has the magical ability to set
00:12:20.920 price is 30% lower without any negative consequences whatsoever. There are no trade-offs.
00:12:27.620 You know, one of the main things you learn in life as an adult is that there are trade-offs
00:12:32.280 for anything. There are always trade-offs for anything. Uh, and yet, according to MomDani
00:12:38.280 supporters, he's, he is a, he's like a genie, right? He's magical. He is the one exception
00:12:43.580 to that rule of life. For him, there are no trade-offs. He can just do stuff and it's fine.
00:12:49.080 Uh, watch.
00:13:19.080 profit for grocery stores is one to two percent is because their overhead costs are extremely high
00:13:25.320 what mom donnie is doing is removing the overhead costs that these grocery stores have he's just
00:13:30.760 changing the business model it's the same reason why aldi can afford to sell groceries for cheaper
00:13:35.640 than your local grocer they have a different business model mom donnie's grocery stores are
00:13:41.000 selling select items at a reduced rate just like aldi doesn't have everything your regular grocery
00:13:46.520 store has they only have items they can afford to sell for less there mumdani's grocery stores
00:13:51.480 don't pay rent because the building is owned by the city and they don't pay taxes because they
00:13:56.580 are the city that takes a huge amount of your operating costs off of your business every year
00:14:01.620 that money you're able to put those profits back onto the consumer
00:14:05.960 uh first of all you know credit to this woman for sticking with just one camera angle even if it is
00:14:14.880 a weird one instead of 20 different cuts with 50 different poses. So that's a genuine improvement
00:14:19.160 in TikTok production from the typical liberal woman on the app. And so we should applaud it.
00:14:24.540 At the same time, it needs to be said that the beginning of her video just doesn't, I mean,
00:14:27.860 no part of it, nothing she said works. Um, you know, if somebody says, I don't understand how
00:14:32.880 Mom Donnie's plan is going to work. It seems like communist nonsense that will destroy the economy.
00:14:38.020 You know, it doesn't work to reply with, well, you said it yourself, you don't understand.
00:14:42.060 So if you're going to, you know, sass an imaginary person who you made up for the video, the quip needs to make some sense.
00:14:48.120 Yes, he admitted he doesn't understand, this hypothetical person, because it doesn't make any sense.
00:14:52.920 So the act of not understanding something doesn't mean you're an idiot.
00:14:56.160 Just as easily, it could mean you're dealing with an incoherent concept.
00:14:59.960 So when someone says they don't understand Mamdani's socialist policies,
00:15:04.340 they don't mean they don't understand in the way that, like, they don't understand calculus or some other coherent, though complex topic.
00:15:11.120 They mean they don't understand in the way that they don't understand the gibberish ramblings of the homeless crackhead on the subway platform.
00:15:17.780 They don't understand it because it's nonsensical.
00:15:20.480 There is nothing to understand.
00:15:22.760 Now, she tries to make the case that if you buy up all the ingredients for a loaf of bread,
00:15:27.100 you could sell the loaf for more than a one to three percent profit margin.
00:15:31.080 And therefore, we're supposed to conclude that the grocery stores are raking in big bucks.
00:15:36.160 but the ingredients themselves are not the only input that creates a loaf of bread.
00:15:42.200 Labor counts as an input. Someone has to mix those ingredients. These people always forget
00:15:47.620 that part of it. And then there are, and you have to pay for that unless we're going with slavery.
00:15:53.060 I mean, that's one way to get around the labor costs because they never factored into their
00:15:57.180 calculations. Oh, you know, profit margins are much higher than that. You know, because labor
00:16:03.940 is free, apparently. Yeah, well, if we're going to, I mean, are we bringing slavery back?
00:16:08.060 Is that what you're advocating? Probably. And then there are many different fixed costs,
00:16:14.740 like an oven, a building for the oven, you know, stuff like that. It's actually more work and more
00:16:22.260 money than people like this apparently think. Now, Mamdani's plan to short circuit these overhead
00:16:27.300 costs, contrary to what this woman says, is not remotely similar to Aldi's model. Aldi maintains
00:16:34.060 its profit margins by selling Aldi brand slop and making the shopping experience as unpleasant as
00:16:40.240 possible. They market themselves to people who don't care about variety or shelves that are
00:16:44.600 stocked properly or employees who will bag their goods or have any will to live. But Aldi does not
00:16:50.720 force New Yorkers at gunpoint to subsidize any of the items they sell. They don't demand that
00:16:56.280 New Yorkers pay for their rent and their tax bills and their employees' salaries and everything
00:17:01.900 else. So this is a very important distinction. It is not a different business model that Mamdani
00:17:07.420 is proposing. He's not proposing a business model. He's proposing no business model at all. He's
00:17:12.460 taking people's money and redistributing it using a grocery store as a mechanism. He's taking
00:17:18.560 people's money by force at gunpoint, which is how the government operates, and redistributing it.
00:17:25.500 That's it. And the cost, again, cannot possibly be matched by competitors. Momdani stores won't
00:17:31.420 convince Trader Joe's to lower their prices on bananas because they can't go any lower without
00:17:36.860 losing money. They actually have to pay for the labor and the building and all that other stuff.
00:17:41.900 Instead, this operation will quickly drive countless grocery stores out of business to
00:17:45.360 the point that people have no choice but to form bread lines at their local Momdani Mart.
00:17:50.460 And this socialist woman does the same thing that socialists always do by pretending that,
00:17:54.020 you know, things that are government subsidized are somehow free. She says that Mamdani Marts
00:17:58.680 don't pay rent. And that's true, but that's only because the taxpayers are forced to cover the
00:18:05.680 cost. Yes, it's incredible just how cheap everything suddenly becomes when you put a
00:18:10.240 gun to the head of the taxpayer and force him to pay for it for you. But cheap for who exactly?
00:18:16.600 not for the taxpayer he's the one whose pockets you're wringing out so this is cheap specifically
00:18:24.080 for people who aren't paying taxes for the leeches the non-contributors it's cheap you're not erasing
00:18:30.860 any burdens you're just shifting more of the burden onto the dwindling group of people who
00:18:35.280 are already forced to carry almost all of it there's another massive problem too which is
00:18:40.740 that these stores create an incentive for members of the public including people from outside new
00:18:44.880 York to buy up everything from the shelves in order to resell it. You know, there's a guaranteed
00:18:50.020 30% margin after all. That's already what happens very often with merchandise in third world cities
00:18:55.620 like Los Angeles. People steal from CVS and then sell the merchandise on the sidewalk and then go
00:19:00.200 buy drugs with it. In this case, the city is making it very easy to do the same thing. They're
00:19:04.420 inviting theft. Mamdani was asked about his plan to prevent this from happening. And his answer
00:19:09.440 answer or you know really the answer from one of his stooges uh is uh is great i mean it belongs
00:19:15.540 in a museum really watch how are you going to keep people from taking advantage of that uh you know
00:19:23.460 that deal basically and is there going to be a limit on the number of items that someone can
00:19:28.360 take that are discounted at that level from that essential basket so our rfp makes very clear that
00:19:33.060 this is a program for new yorkers to be able to put food on the table not a program for people
00:19:38.960 to be able to make a quick buck through reselling.
00:19:40.680 I'm going to pass it over to our EDC head,
00:19:42.640 GPAC, to add some additional details.
00:19:45.760 Yes, if you look at our RFP for the operator,
00:19:48.000 we are looking to make sure that we target New Yorkers,
00:19:51.940 whether it be at sort of a library card exit,
00:19:54.200 and also we manage who's buying
00:19:56.680 and that is focused on everyday New Yorkers.
00:19:59.740 So we are mindful of that,
00:20:01.940 and so we're going to make sure that we have all the things in place
00:20:05.220 to make sure that that does not happen.
00:20:08.960 So they're going to require an ID. By the way, so requiring, the question is how are you going to stop people from buying the cheap items and reselling them? And her answer is, well, we're going to make sure it's only New Yorkers who are able to, you know, buy things at the store. That doesn't solve the problem at all. That doesn't answer the question. But are you implying that New Yorkers would never do this?
00:20:29.840 Well, no, only outsiders would come in and buy up cheap items and resell them.
00:20:35.020 Actual New Yorkers would, New Yorkers would never scam.
00:20:38.340 They would never steal or scam.
00:20:41.080 Oh, not, not New Yorkers.
00:20:42.560 New Yorkers are saints.
00:20:44.980 Recently, our company softball team lost the big game by one run.
00:20:49.120 Then Dale tried to console us with the quote, winning isn't everything.
00:20:53.500 Well, Dale and I are very different.
00:20:56.680 I get early payout from Bet365.
00:20:59.220 If my team goes up big, I get paid out instantly,
00:21:02.020 even if they blow the lead later.
00:21:04.020 Sound familiar, Dale?
00:21:05.820 Thanks, Bet365.
00:21:07.440 Must be 19 or older Ontario only.
00:21:08.980 Please play responsibly.
00:21:09.800 If you have questions or concerns about your gambling
00:21:11.220 or the gambling of someone close to you,
00:21:12.300 please go to connexontario.ca and see supply.
00:21:15.780 So yes, Mom Donnie Marts will require ID.
00:21:18.660 So now your library card won't just buy you a front row seat
00:21:21.940 to hobos doing indecent and unspeakable things at the library.
00:21:25.540 Now it will get you access to state funded grocery stores, too. Now, of course, you still don't need your ID to vote. That would be preposterous. You don't need your ID to vote because voting is a right, which means for some reason that we shouldn't need to do anything. We shouldn't do anything to protect it.
00:21:43.120 But hold on a second. Mamdani also says that access to affordable food is a right. And yet, in that case, he will require an ID. So if you didn't know any better, you get the distinct impression that socialists just make up the rules as they go. What they said five seconds ago has no bearing on what they're saying in the present moment, which is exactly the case.
00:22:04.240 And by the way, since we're on the subject, Mamdani hasn't limited himself to increasing
00:22:07.820 grocery prices for New Yorkers. He's also doing everything in his power to make takeout and fast
00:22:12.900 food delivery even more absurdly expensive than it already was. Last week, Mamdani posted on social
00:22:18.640 media bragging that since he took office, tips for food delivery drivers have gone up by tens
00:22:24.560 of millions of dollars, actually like $100 million or something. And it turns out that this was
00:22:29.100 actually thanks to a piece of legislation that was passed before he took office, or a policy
00:22:35.460 mandating that Uber Eats, DoorDash, and other food delivery apps set default tips at 10% and make the
00:22:43.080 tipping options more prominent so that people are more likely to click on them. And thanks to this
00:22:48.700 change, $104 million have gone back into delivery workers' pockets, as Mamdani puts it. Which is a
00:22:56.360 funny way to say that food delivery has become even more expensive for New Yorkers. And keep
00:23:00.640 in mind, of course, that food delivery apps already charge a premium for all the taxes and
00:23:05.200 fees, the delivery fee, the service fee. Sometimes they have like a small order fee or a long range
00:23:12.460 fee or the priority delivery fee. And if users are hesitant to add a tip after all those fees,
00:23:18.880 it's because their $14 burrito, which is already too expensive, is going to run them $27 without
00:23:24.860 tip. Not to mention the tip is added as a percentage of the grand total, including taxes
00:23:30.400 and fees. So they artificially inflate the price to an absurd degree, and then expect you to give
00:23:34.940 a tip based on the artificially inflated price. So by this bit of voodoo magic, a 20% tip on a
00:23:41.260 $14 burrito ends up being $6, even though 20% of 14, last I checked, is actually like $3.
00:23:48.340 So it's all a giant scam, and Mabdani has intentionally made the scam worse and more
00:23:52.580 expensive, and he's proud of it. Actually, he wasn't even responsible for this particular scam,
00:23:57.660 but he's taking credit for it, which is somehow even worse. Now, it's all so obvious and so
00:24:04.080 demoralizing. You have to wonder how we got to this point. Mamdani's election is largely the
00:24:08.780 result of the foreign takeover of New York City, as we've discussed many times before. In the third
00:24:13.040 world, socialism is an attractive ideology because people aren't bright enough to realize that it
00:24:18.160 doesn't work. You know, morality is often a foreign concept to them. There's a classic Polish
00:24:22.840 book called In Desert and Wilderness that makes this point using something called Kali's Morality.
00:24:29.020 In the book, an African boy named Kali tries to explain his understanding of right and wrong. He
00:24:32.960 says, if somebody takes Kali's cow, it's a bad deed. If Kali takes somebody's cow, it's a good
00:24:38.640 deed. And that's the end of that. And that's actually how much of the world operates. All the
00:24:44.440 same. It's too simplistic to say that foreign invaders are the only explanation for what's
00:24:48.180 happening. The fact remains that Americans, especially white liberal women, are lining up
00:24:53.780 to support socialist candidates all over the country. And many people, regardless of their
00:24:57.400 politics, are understandably and justifiably furious that groceries are now so expensive. So
00:25:02.360 how did this happen? Why exactly did groceries get to be so expensive? One explanation, which
00:25:10.060 you rarely hear relates to the wars in Iran and Ukraine. There's been a ton of price pressure on
00:25:15.980 fertilizer, which just so happens to be made from the same precursors as explosives and propellants
00:25:21.820 used in ammunition, artillery, etc. Natural gas in particular is a huge part of the production for
00:25:27.540 nitrogen fertilizers, and the wars have made the fertilizer and the gas far more expensive. Farmers
00:25:32.820 can pass the cost along to consumers in the form of higher prices, or they forego some fertilizers
00:25:38.460 in exchange for smaller yields, which has the same effect, higher prices.
00:25:42.860 This was a report from the beginning of the Ukraine war by the Wall Street Journal.
00:25:47.820 Watch.
00:25:49.900 Fertilizer prices have hit record highs, driven by supply shortages caused by the Ukraine-Russia
00:25:55.580 war, along with a host of pre-existing factors. It's a challenge for all of U.S. agriculture
00:26:01.500 right now. For farmers who are just walking in to buy fertilizer today, they're twice as
00:26:07.100 expensive as they would have been last August, close to three times as costly as they would
00:26:12.240 have been in early 2021.
00:26:15.860 Fertilizer is typically among farmers' biggest expenses each year, and the rising costs are
00:26:20.680 creating cascading impacts for farmer incomes, crop yields, and food prices.
00:26:26.280 Fertilizer is about three to four times costlier now than in 2020, and farmers around the world
00:26:31.740 are feeling the pinch.
00:26:32.740 High fertilizer prices has affected really the flow of how our operation does business.
00:26:38.160 And really, it comes down to timing and how much risk does the retailer take?
00:26:42.280 How much risk does a farmer take?
00:26:45.860 Now, this war, as you may have noticed, never ended.
00:26:49.060 Instead, we now have a new war, one involving Iran, a major global energy producer that holds the second largest natural gas reserves in the world.
00:26:56.800 So we have simultaneous wars involving the biggest fertilizer exporter, Russia, and two of the biggest energy producers in the entire world, Iran and the United States.
00:27:07.100 This is a recipe for exactly what we're seeing in grocery stores and every other sector of the economy that's dependent on these particular inputs.
00:27:15.400 Add in disease and droughts and you get the perfect storm.
00:27:18.620 as Douglas Holtz Eakin told the New York Post, quote, the spike in grocery prices has remained
00:27:23.020 persistent due to shrinking U.S. cattle herds in the start of the Ukraine war in 2022. Grocery
00:27:28.220 prices have gone up, especially in 21, but they have stayed high due to cattle disease and bad
00:27:33.360 growing conditions. He said the war in Ukraine hurt as well because it's essentially the grain
00:27:38.400 basket of the world. But the wars are only part of the problem. As we mentioned earlier, the COVID
00:27:43.880 lockdowns were the beginning of the decline. We were all forced to stay indoors and businesses
00:27:48.920 were forced to close down, even though all the experts, including Johns Hopkins, now concede
00:27:54.340 that the lockdowns serve no purpose whatsoever. In exchange for suspending our personal freedoms
00:27:59.900 and destroying the livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans, the federal government started
00:28:04.040 mailing stimulus checks and funding other welfare programs that cost around $5 trillion. And
00:28:10.140 Additionally, because the markets were crashing, the Fed spent trillions of dollars buying up
00:28:14.640 assets, started to officially keep the markets afloat. This money was essentially created out
00:28:19.480 of thin air. The Treasury borrowed the money, and the Fed in turn bought treasuries from the market.
00:28:25.200 It's like we fired up the money printer. And naturally, when you introduce all of this new
00:28:29.760 money into the economy, the value of every dollar goes down. That's basic supply and demand.
00:28:35.320 Therefore, prices go up across the board, including at grocery stores.
00:28:39.820 Now, I should note, because not enough people mention this, that a lot of this money was created specifically to fund pension programs for the elderly,
00:28:47.260 as well as welfare for non-white foreigners and emergency top-ups for hospitals during the lockdowns.
00:28:53.660 We weren't generating nearly enough tax revenues to cover these obligations, so we simply created the money.
00:28:58.600 Congress carved out all kinds of exceptions for illegal aliens with the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the CARES Act to ensure that foreigners would receive preventative care for COVID, as well as COVID testing and treatment for acute emergencies and so on.
00:29:15.700 community health centers received billions of federal dollars in exchange for treating anyone
00:29:20.880 who walked in the door. States received even more money to help ensure that foreigners in case they
00:29:26.220 came down with the flu, you know, I mean, COVID would be okay. And on that note, since he's been
00:29:32.540 in the news lately, here's Tony Fauci talking to a random guy in DC about COVID. You may remember
00:29:38.120 this clip, but notice what Fauci says at the end of it concerning the number of fatalities
00:29:43.920 from the flu. Listen.
00:29:47.220 The people in America are not settled
00:29:50.180 with the information that's been given to us right now.
00:29:53.780 So I'm not going to be lining up taking a shot
00:29:56.220 on a vaccination for something
00:29:58.840 that wasn't clear in the first place.
00:30:01.040 And then you all create a shot in miraculous time.
00:30:05.740 It takes years to create vaccination.
00:30:09.380 Well, it used to take years.
00:30:11.060 Okay, it used to.
00:30:11.760 You know how many years we're invested in this approach?
00:30:16.440 About 20 years of science to get us to be able to do it.
00:30:19.800 20 years is not enough.
00:30:20.760 And nine months is definitely not enough
00:30:22.780 for nobody to be taking no vaccination
00:30:24.680 that you all came up with.
00:30:26.180 The only reason I'm talking to you right now,
00:30:28.280 as close as we are, is that I've been vaccinated.
00:30:31.080 Right.
00:30:31.580 But if a lot of thousands of people like you
00:30:34.220 don't get vaccinated,
00:30:35.560 you're going to let this virus continue to percolate
00:30:37.980 in this country and in this world.
00:30:39.400 Something like the common flu then, right?
00:30:41.000 It's much more serious than the flu.
00:30:44.000 Well, the flu kills a lot of people annually, too.
00:30:46.000 You know how many people died of the flu the last year?
00:30:50.000 I mean, not this year, virtually none, but the previous year?
00:30:53.000 About 20,000 to 30,000.
00:30:55.000 How many people have died from COVID-19 in the United States?
00:30:58.000 600,000 Americans.
00:31:03.000 Hey, has Fauci ever stopped by that guy's house to apologize?
00:31:06.000 Because, you know, that guy was right about everything he said.
00:31:10.000 and Fauci was wrong and lying. And if you listen closely, he admits that the death count from the
00:31:15.720 flu was virtually none during COVID, which is amazing when you think about it. At precisely
00:31:21.820 the same moment COVID was spreading like wildfire for the first time in recorded history,
00:31:26.040 no one in the entire country managed to die from the flu. You know, many of us made this point at
00:31:31.560 the time. It's almost as if we started counting all deaths from the flu and many other diseases
00:31:37.320 as COVID deaths. It's almost as if hospitals had a financial incentive to count as many COVID deaths
00:31:42.660 as they possibly could because they'd receive more federal funding if they did. More specifically,
00:31:47.520 if hospitals documented that they were treating someone on Medicare for COVID, then they'd receive
00:31:52.360 a 20% increase in Medicare payments. In other words, if a hospital was treating an old person,
00:31:57.220 the population most likely to die by far, they'd have a massive incentive to claim that the person
00:32:01.800 was suffering from COVID. If they did that, they'd get more money. That was another invention of the
00:32:06.640 CARES Act, which paid out hundreds of billions of dollars. Now, all this spending with money
00:32:11.600 the government didn't have for the benefit of a very specific subset of the population
00:32:15.480 has led to the higher prices that we're seeing right now. This is part of a much broader issue,
00:32:21.740 which is that our leaders have a perverse incentive to provide an extraordinary amount
00:32:25.620 of entitlements for the elderly and illegal aliens. You know, the elderly, of course, are
00:32:31.020 one of the most powerful voting blocs in the country. They show up to the polls in greater
00:32:34.740 numbers than anybody else. Many of the politicians they vote for are also elderly. Retirement does
00:32:41.220 not exist as a concept for our elected leaders. Mitch McConnell has been essentially catatonic
00:32:46.100 and bedridden for months, if not years, and he still has not resigned. And there's a lot of
00:32:51.980 self-interest here among both the elderly politicians and the people who vote for them.
00:32:57.060 That's why older voters refuse to consider the possibility of social security reform,
00:33:01.000 even though Social Security is a giant Ponzi scheme that forces every working American to
00:33:06.240 waste a portion of their paycheck every two weeks, money that they could have invested
00:33:10.000 themselves for infinitely better returns. Yes, we should respect our elders, obviously. Yes,
00:33:15.780 people who paid into Social Security should ideally have their money returned. But many
00:33:20.560 of our policies favor older Americans at the expense of young families who are in the process
00:33:26.640 of being economically strangled, and nobody seems to care. Again, our politicians have no incentive
00:33:33.180 to tell the truth about any of this, because any politician who does so will immediately be
00:33:37.680 expelled from office. As for illegal aliens, of course, they're vital to the globalist campaign
00:33:43.680 of mass demographic replacement, so they're entitled to infinite spending as well. To the
00:33:47.880 extent that our elites panicked during COVID, it was because they feared illegal aliens might get
00:33:52.060 wiped out, reversing the effect of years of their open borders policies. So we had to spend hundreds
00:33:57.520 of billions of dollars making sure that illegal aliens had emergency room care, masks, fake
00:34:03.440 vaccines, and on and on and on. Now, the result is that interest payments on the national debt are
00:34:08.700 now more expensive than defense spending. The defense budget is around $900 billion, and the
00:34:16.280 CBO expects that interest payments on our debt will exceed a trillion dollars this year.
00:34:21.660 In just the first quarter of 2026, the interest payments totaled more than $270 billion.
00:34:26.860 So we're well on our way. Other than Social Security payments, nothing is more expensive
00:34:32.480 for this country than interest payments on our debt. Since the COVID lockdowns, for context,
00:34:38.440 we've more than doubled our interest payments. In all of 2019, we only spent something like
00:34:42.700 $375 billion in interest payments. Only. Only $375 billion. But now the Fed refuses to lower
00:34:51.300 rates, and we've spent so much more money that the payments are now completely out of control.
00:34:57.420 In related news, we're losing control of our ability to manage interest rates. Now,
00:35:01.940 you can sense this from the tension between the White House and the Fed, which refuses to
00:35:05.340 change interest rates, despite a lot of pressure from the president, as well as the new appointment
00:35:09.880 of a new Fed share. And the problem is pretty clear. A single percentage point increase in
00:35:14.680 the interest rate now means that we'll owe $3 trillion more over the next decade. Raising rates
00:35:21.740 could have disastrous consequences for our finances. And meanwhile, if the Fed cut rates,
00:35:26.120 as the president wants, there's a legitimate risk of making inflation even worse. And this
00:35:30.760 inflation risk is higher because the government is already spending far too much money and
00:35:34.320 injecting far too much money into the economy. So we box ourselves into a position where there's
00:35:39.340 no clear right answer. In the meantime, some of the most prominent commentators and podcasters
00:35:45.100 in the country are busy every day rambling about conspiracy theories and getting into soap opera
00:35:52.320 feuds with other prominent commentators and podcasters. There's been very little discussion
00:35:57.080 about one of the most dangerous developments in this country's history, which is that people are
00:36:02.720 struggling to pay for their ever-increasing grocery bills. As long as the left is responding
00:36:09.620 to this crisis, while the right obsesses over nonsense and gossip, the socialists will continue
00:36:16.420 to win elections all over the country. That's how socialists have always risen to power all over the
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00:37:46.240 One of the many things we've lost in modern life is the ability to depend on each other. We've
00:37:51.040 become dependent on systems rather than on our communities. Christians are called to support
00:37:56.140 one another, pray for one another, and bear one another's burdens. And that's one reason I
00:38:00.940 appreciate Christian Healthcare Ministries. CHM isn't health insurance. It's a health cost-sharing
00:38:06.700 ministry where Christians voluntarily come together to share one another's eligible medical
00:38:11.440 bills. It's a practical way of living out the Christian life, not just talking about it.
00:38:15.640 Christian Healthcare Ministries has been doing exactly that since 1981. In 45 years, CHM has
00:38:21.700 satisfied 100% of every eligible medical bill that they've received. Programs start as low as $115
00:38:27.680 per person per month with added protection for catastrophic medical events. If you're looking
00:38:33.000 for an affordable biblical alternative, you should check these guys out. You can start it today by
00:38:38.600 visiting chministries.org slash Walsh. That's chministries.org slash Walsh. In February of
00:38:46.680 1917, International Women's Day, female textile workers went on strike demanding bread.
00:38:53.940 And in a matter of months, the Bolsheviks quickly rose to power with the slogan,
00:38:57.400 peace, land, and bread. They were forcing people to empty out their bank accounts at gunpoint
00:39:03.020 soon afterwards. And we discuss all this in our latest Real History special, but
00:39:07.120 it's hardly the only example. The Hungarian Soviet Republic formed after severe food shortages
00:39:12.920 in Budapest. Ahead of the French Revolution, bread prices cost something like 80 percent of
00:39:18.060 the typical family budget. Rioters stormed the Bastille in part to find grain. The German
00:39:24.060 Revolution of 1918 followed failed potato harvests, which led to mutiny strikes and the ouster of the
00:39:29.580 Kaiser. The Paris Commune of 1871 followed food shortages after the Franco-Prussian War, in which
00:39:36.100 people were reduced to eating zoo animals and household pets. Hundreds of thousands of people
00:39:41.500 died in Greece during the Great Famine following Axis occupation, leading to the rise of a
00:39:47.140 Communist Party called the National Liberation Front and setting the stage for a civil war.
00:39:51.160 In America, following the Great Depression, Democrats began trying to pack the Supreme
00:39:54.840 Court and destroy our institutions, which was the closest we've ever come to a genuine leftist
00:39:59.480 revolution here. Until now. Well, less than a century later, suddenly a large-scale leftist
00:40:07.360 revolution is once again plausible. All the elements are there. The foreign wars, the days
00:40:14.440 of rage, the constant left-wing assassinations and domestic terrorism, inflation, an affordability
00:40:21.100 crisis that's making groceries more difficult to obtain than they've been in memory. All of it
00:40:26.740 stacks. All of it compounds. Now, the left has no solution to any of this. All of their ideas would
00:40:33.680 make the problem far worse. But unlike the leaders of the right, these socialists have one major
00:40:40.320 advantage, which is that they understand that these problems do exist. They're speaking to an
00:40:48.800 audience about issues that actually matter, even if their solutions always involve creating more
00:40:53.980 of the exact kinds of problems they're supposedly trying to solve. If we spend the next five months
00:41:00.680 focused on foreign affairs and intra-right-wing squabbling
00:41:05.400 while the left talks about groceries?
00:41:10.020 Well, the truth is it doesn't matter
00:41:11.460 if they propose Soviet-style grocery stores
00:41:13.720 that will obviously fail.
00:41:16.200 They'll win anyway.
00:41:18.480 Because at least they're doing something.
00:41:21.420 They might be doing the worst possible thing,
00:41:24.560 but generally the people who do something,
00:41:28.720 even the worst thing,
00:41:30.680 tend to win over the people who do nothing at all.
00:41:36.040 That's the lesson of every socialist revolution throughout history.
00:41:40.380 And unless we start taking some legitimate action to reverse this trend,
00:41:44.600 starting with an immediate end to these foreign wars,
00:41:47.980 and a refocus on the most important domestic matters, starting with the price of food,
00:41:53.580 it'll be a lesson that we inevitably learn as well.
00:41:57.760 And we're going to learn it the hard way.
00:42:00.680 That'll do it for the show today.
00:42:01.720 Thanks for watching.
00:42:02.180 Thanks for listening.
00:42:02.720 Talk to you tomorrow.
00:42:03.500 Have a great day.
00:42:04.940 Godspeed.
00:42:12.520 Once upon a time, there was a country.
00:42:15.800 Not just a country, but a big one, an empire.
00:42:18.820 And in that empire, there was an upper middle class family
00:42:21.300 where two boys were raised by their mother,
00:42:24.720 loved books, Uncle Tom's cabin, the Bible.
00:42:28.160 Their father admired the country's leaders.
00:42:29.840 were patriotic and happy. Both sons went to universities where they were
00:42:34.600 radicalized. One of the brothers read a book and convinced him to try to shoot
00:42:38.840 the country's leader. He was hanged. The other brother read the same books but
00:42:43.960 decided to lead a movement. First they came from the universities and no one
00:42:48.020 seemed to care. Then they took over the unions and again no one seemed to care.
00:42:51.500 Then they created their own media organizations and took over the cities.
00:42:54.860 And again most people just ignored them. Change after all was something they
00:42:59.240 could believe it until it was too late. Sound familiar? This is the real history of communism,
00:43:06.480 the Russian Revolution.
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