Once the gifts have been opened and often exchanged, the Christmas decorations packed up and stored, the last of the holiday goodies consumed and a new year welcomed with celebrations, financial reality sets in. Despite government spokespersons telling them the economy is fine, people know with every purchase the economy isn’t fine.

Stacey Vanek Smith, cohost of the Planet Money podcast on National Public Radio, put it this way in late November: “The most recent numbers show prices up 7.7 percent over 2021. But for items like eggs, health insurance and gasoline, prices have been rising much faster than that.”

Businesses are often blamed for higher prices. But as Smith pointed out, the cost of raw materials is up more than 8 percent and businesses are simply passing on the higher costs of production to consumers.

Other economic news isn’t good, either. Bloomberg contributor Naureen S. Malik wrote about U.S. power prices rising the most in 41 years. Miguel Otarola, a climate and environment reporter at Colorado Public Radio, reported the latest energy bills from Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest public utility, are almost double the amount from November. Xcel attributed the increase to higher natural gas prices. Since there is a shortage of coal, more natural gas is necessary to make up the difference.

Why is there a shortage of coal? Why is there a shortage of natural gas? Why is inflation stealing our wealth? The answer is ruinous fiscal policy at the federal and state levels.

Policies matter. The United States has a debt-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio of 125 percent. According to Epoch Times contributor Michael Washburn, government debt exceeds the entire value of goods and services produced by the country in a year. The debt-to-GDP ratio has more than doubled over the last 20 years. The government continues to spend money it doesn’t have and prints money, devaluing the dollar and causing runaway inflation.

America has an abundance of energy resources. as Alex Epstein’s research indicated in his book “Fossil Future,” the U.S. could lead the world in low-cost, reliable and increasingly clean energy. Instead, he wrote, “A root cause of America’s cost and reliability problems is extreme preferences for unreliable solar and wind electricity.” Utilities are coerced into combining intermittent and unreliable sources of wind and solar energy with reliable sources of fossil fuel energy. Because the unreliable energy sources are heavily subsidized by the government, Epstein contends unfair rules make utilities pay the same for unreliable solar and wind as they do for reliable energy sources. Government leaders openly try to destroy fossil fuel production. Higher utility bills are the result of that bad policy.

Fiscal policy is directly influenced by the ideology of its creators. Whether public policy is through laws, regulations, subsidies or taxes, the ideology of those in power affects the pocketbooks of citizens. The financial well-being of American citizens is in peril because of ruinous fiscal policies.

A new year has begun, but will anything we need to live be affordable?