Iowa Politics with Jeff Stein -- Tue. Oct. 13, 2026

Pocket Book Issues.

I'm Jeff Stein with today's Iowa Politics Report.

What if I told you that you would have to come up with an extra $1,500 a month, every month, just to maintain your standard of living?

You'd say that's a pretty big jump and that you could not afford it.

But that's exactly what you have done if you're a typical Iowa family.

I talked about this recently on the Iowa Business Report, but in case you missed it, data from Common Sense Institute Iowa shows that since 2020, the year of the COVID pandemic, the typical Iowa family has had to pay $1,492 more each month, on average, just to account for inflation.

That's more than $60,000 so far.

Keep in mind the problem with inflation.

Things never go back to where they were.

Presuming that inflation is normally at around 3% a year, the Federal Reserve and others would prefer 2%, but that's why interest rates don't drop.

Well, we already have increased costs 3% a year.

Now, prior to COVID during Trump 1.0, inflation dropped to only 1.6%.

Still an increase, but only 1.6%.

During the Biden years, it was as high as 9%.

So while things are far better than that now, costs do keep going up, Middle East war or not.

The rate of increase has slowed in Trump 2.0 compared with the Biden years, but again, we do not have deflation and actual drop in costs.

So stated another way.

Imagine if you had an extra $1500 per month and what you could do with that.

But that's daydreaming.

Reality is you've had to come up with more income or else cut your standard of living.

But it's not something that just happened since the conflict in Iran began.

And that's the Iowa Politics Report for Tuesday, October 13 on Twitter, Instagram, Gitter, Threads and Truth Social at Iowa Politics.

I'm Jeff Stein on News Talk 1540, KXEL.