I went to the grocery store over the weekend. I spent $254 and change on groceries. It was actually $334, but I took advantage of a deal where I could spend $80 and get $100 in gas cards.

As we left the checkout, the cashier told us we saved 90 something dollars. I kind of chuckled. We did try to take advantage of some “buy one get one” specials and some other discounts, but it didn’t seem like almost a hundred dollars in savings. It felt like I had just spent $254 on groceries.

We didn’t even get all of our meals for the entire week for the family. There were a few purchases that may be for things that we only have to buy once a month, but it was still a lot. I was just noticing the prices on items from meat to nuts to eggs to fruit to chips. Everything just seems absurdly expensive.

Not Much Wage Inflation

I can tell you from personal experience and anecdotal experience that wages are not keeping up with price inflation at the grocery store. And no matter how the government calculates the CPI, virtually everyone has to buy food from a store. Maybe there is a tiny fraction who grow their own food, but even here I find they still have to shop for certain items.

For someone making an exceptionally high income, the price increases at the grocery store are not a big deal. If you’re making $400,000 per year, an extra 50 bucks at the grocery store is barely felt.

But for most of America – and that includes many people making six figures – the higher prices are a major drain. Some people have to save less. Some people can barely save at all. Some people have to make major cuts in other expenses. Some people even have to take on debt just to buy necessities.

Struggles Before a Recession

During an economic boom, it is believed that most everyone is happy and living well. It is when the recession or depression hits when nearly everyone struggles.

But the struggling happens before the bust phase. The recession is especially hard for those who lose their employment. It is also hard because asset prices like housing and stocks are likely to go down.

But for most people, a recession is just hard because it is a realization that the supposed good times can’t keep rolling. It forces some fiscal discipline, which means belt tightening.

If you go on vacation and live it up for a week, everything seems great. But you know that life can’t continue because you have to keep earning money to pay for it. So reality eventually strikes and you leave your vacation to go back to work.

But the analogy fails a bit here because the hard times start before the recession hits. That’s where we are now.

American families are struggling greatly. Many don’t want to talk about it because of the fact that we aren’t in a recession, at least according to the official data and the official definition. People will make comments complaining about prices, but they won’t be really open about how much of a struggle it is.

The fact is that consumer prices are rising faster than wages. Food is one of those things going up in price faster than wages, and almost everyone buys food. So in that category, most people are falling behind.

And even if price inflation slows down to 2%, prices are still going up. They are just going up at a slower pace. It’s not like food prices are ever going to go back to what they were a few years ago.

We Need Relief

America – especially middle class America – needs a good hard recession. Sure, it will be painful. But you know what? Right now is quite painful.

At least with a recession, we can hope to repair some of the damage (the misallocations) and set the stage for some actual prosperity in the future.

Unfortunately, the Fed often steps in and creates more money to “cure” the problem while setting the stage for more trouble down the road.

But even if there is some Fed intervention, we still need a recession to clear out some of the malinvestment and to bring everyone back to reality.

With the heavily inverted yield curve, a recession is baked into the cake at this point. It’s just a question of how soon it will happen and how severe it will be.

Again, this will be painful for many people. It will be especially painful for people who lose their primary source of income. But if we don’t have a correction, the hard times will just keep going and keep getting harder.

The tight Fed policy of the late 1970s and early 1980s (after an era of loose money and high price inflation) brought about multiple recessions. But the 1980s ended up being pretty good, economically speaking. It was probably the last time there was a good cleansing of the malinvestment.

At this point, Americans should actually hope for a recession. It is going to happen anyway, and most people are already struggling. We might as well get the pain over with and have some hope of returning to some kind of genuine and sustainable prosperity.