By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome
Affordability stalked President Joe Biden for much of his presidency although economic statistics showed a rebounding economy with manufacturing expanding for the first time in years.
President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign turned affordability into a hammer he rode into his second term in the White House.
Now the affordability issue is biting him where it hurts, in his polling numbers as the elections two weeks ago proved. Instead of worrying about immigrants, drug sellers and his ballroom, he has since tried to take back the issue of affordability although he has been in office for 10 months.
Last week he tried to convince the American people to imagine the economic boom he fantasizes, although most working people believe the economy is stacked against them in favor of the wealthy, the elites and the oligarchs who are taking over under the second Trump administration.
Despite the lack of the once reliable economic data from the bureau of labor statistics, other sources of data indicate prices continue to rise for groceries, energy, electricity, housing, utilities, healthcare and transportation, while the middle class and below cannot earn enough money to meet the higher prices.
In a move to try to reduce prices, the president issued an executive order dropping the tariffs on beef, tomatoes, coffee, bananas and tropical fruit, acknowledging for the first time that his tariffs act like a tax on goods for American consumers without saying it.
A recent analysis by the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute painted a stark picture of what most people know, they are falling further and further behind as the nation’s wealth flows upward to 1 percenters, leaving less and less for the middle class and below.
The study indicated a typical family of four’s disposal income over the last decade dropped by $17,349 as earnings fell short of increases in the costs of housing, child care, health care, food and energy.
The typical New Hampshire family has lost major ground over the past decade, said Nicole Heller, Senior Policy Analyst at NHFPI, as the cost of basic necessities has risen substantially faster than household incomes.
“Ten years ago, a typical family could cover the basics, pay for other essentials, and still have a modest cushion for emergencies and savings,” Heller said. “Today, that same family is falling short. Not because they’re earning less, but because the cost of living has grown so much faster than incomes.”
A median income household with a family of four in 2024 fell nearly $1,900 short annually covering only these core household expenses: housing, child care, food, gasoline, and health care.
The typical family of four earning $99,782 had no money available to pay for student loans, clothing, vehicle payments, recreation or other everyday family costs, the study found.
That’s what hollowing out the middle class looks like and it has been the death of the American dream for many young people facing ever increasing housing, utilities, child care, food and health care costs, all essential for a family.
The Republicans like to tout the “New Hampshire Advantage,” a slogan created over former Gov. Steve Merrill’s kitchen table to blunt his GOP primary challenger’s thoughtfully developed economic development plan for the state.
As you would expect, the New Hampshire Advantage is really about taxes, or the lack of broad-based taxes including income and sales taxes, and the state’s proclivity over the years to not prioritize enforcement of its regulations be they environmental or financial and others in between.
While the slogan favors the old traditional pledge of lawmakers in New Hampshire to oppose broad-based taxes, it ignores the state’s biggest broad-based tax, the property tax, the most regressive tax in the state because it has almost nothing to do with a person’s income.
All of this has made the state very attractive to those who seek to protect their high salaries and their trust funds while exercising their property rights to build “McMansions” along the state’s shorelines or to capture expansive mountain vistas.
At the same time, people in the service industries who serve the upper echelon have — for a long time — had to live miles away from where they work with three or four roommates, and even then barely making ends meet.
Their wages do not increase fast enough to even maintain a lifestyle, particularly as the prices of housing has skyrocketed since the COVID epidemic.
New Hampshire is a very expensive place to live in for most people, although many of the people serving in the New Hampshire legislature would not appear to know that.
The most recent US News and World Report annual survey of the cost-of-living by state, ranks New Hampshire as the seventh most expensive state to live in in the country.
The only New England state more expensive is Massachusetts which ranks fifth behind California, New Jersey, Hawaii and Washington.
According to the survey, Vermont has the cheapest cost of living in New England, at 25th, while Maine is 22nd, Rhode Island is 13th and Connecticut is 10th.
A ranking done by the World Population review changes the ranking of the New England states compared to the US News and World Report, but ranks all six New England States in the top 16 most costly places to live in the country.
Massachusetts is the most expensive and Rhode Island the least expensive for New England, with the others grouped closely at the higher end of the scale.
Housing and utility costs in New England are some of the highest in the country.
Recently the median price of a home in New Hampshire came very close to the $500,000 mark, which puts all but the cheapest houses out of reach of a young family.
New Hampshire also has some of the highest electric rates in the country and they are going up over the next five years due to the latest rate case for Eversource which essentially gave the state’s largest utility a guaranteed increase over that period.
The cost of child care is also very expensive — if you can find it — ranging from about $800 to $1,200 a month.
Healthcare for New Hampshire and all New England residents also costs more than other areas of the country, while transportation costs are also more expensive in the Northeast.
Before the Reagan administration began shifting the tax burden from the wealthy and corporations onto the middle and lower classes in the 1970s, there was unprecedented economic growth for many Americans who were fulfilling their dreams of home ownership, sending their kids to college, buying a new car every three years and maybe even enough for a summer camp on a lake or pond.
But the middle class has been eroded as the NHFPI analysis shows and that is why people feel they can no longer afford the lifestyle they had or dreamed.
Many state residents do not believe there is a New Hampshire Advantage when you can no longer own a home, pay for basics like groceries and utility bills, afford health care, or a reliable automobile.
There is no New Hampshire Advantage when you struggle to survive in the other New Hampshire.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.
Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.