I purposely avoided all coverage of the American election returns this year. On the night the ballots were being counted in the nation south of me, I was driving from Ottawa to my home in Toronto, and I opted to listen to radio coverage of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ trouncing of the Boston Bruins (4-0!) instead of anything political. There was simply too much at stake in the election, and I had deservedly grown mistrustful of the American electorate to make a sensible choice. After all, in 2004 my neighbours to the south had a choice between a war hero (John Kerry) and a nepo-baby draft dodger who had sent his nation’s military into harm’s way to slaughter thousands of innocent Iraqis based on a lie. And it was known to be a lie on election day. Yet Kerry never became president. How did the American get that wrong? You can drive yourself mad paying too close attention to your neighbours’ business.

Is my tone disrespectful of the American electorate? I’ll admit that it is. I don’t respect, in any way, the choice to send Drumpf back to the White House. His first time wasn’t so long ago that people would have difficulty remembering those miserable years. But my reason for sitting here and typing is, first, to process my shell shock, and secondly, to figure out why so many people voted for a racist, sexist and xenophobic convicted criminal. And based on all the analysis and interviews with his supporters, the most sweeping reason for Drumpf votes I could ascertain was this – everything has become much too expensive.

That’s true. Prices have gone up on practically everything. Most people complain about grocery prices, but I think if it really bothered you, you would attempt to direct your anger to the appropriate target. This March the U.S.A Federal Trade Commission reported that grocery chain profits increased at rates that were not justified by supply trade disruptions. Around the time of that report, average grocery prices were 30 percent higher than four years earlier.

Let’s think back to four years ago. What happened four years ago?

The COVID-19 pandemic ravaged so much, least of which was the supply chain to get goods from production to retail. When that happened, a slew of consumer-packaged goods companies that own a treasure trove of trusted brand names collectively moved to ensure their profitability remain undisturbed. Isabella Weber, an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, says “that supply shocks allowed corporations to tacitly collude, hike prices, and rake in record profits…This is a form of implicit collusion…. Firms do not even need to talk to one another to know that a cost shock is a great time to raise prices.”

Many of these companies are multi-national giants like Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz and Procter and Gamble, and because of their cross-border influence, it makes it difficult for any single nation’s government to rein in their abuses. That makes me wonder why it seems the public is blaming the inflated prices on the government instead of companies like Coca-Cola, and the supermarkets that sell it?

Is this me letting the Biden Administration off the hook for failing to adequately address inflation? I’ll admit that there may be a little of that at play here, but I also think governments have limited tools with which to address corporate greed, and I think that is the main cause of the swift rise of prices since the start of the pandemic. On my side of the border, we have Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and a bunch of like-minded provincial premiers who blame high prices on the federal carbon levy in an effort to redirect consumer distress to their own gain, just like on the south side of the border Drumpf and his mouthpieces at Fox News redirected it for theirs. The truth is out there for people to discover, but spin has become such a lucrative industry in the United States that decibel level has become more valued than correctness.

The only honest way to combat this current state of high grocery prices is for consumers to take control of where their dollars go. This is going to be more difficult in some locations than others, but there are always options if you choose to see them. Instead of buying at a huge supermarket chain, buy from a smaller local store. Find out where farmers’ markets are in your neighbourhood. This is a way of steering monetary reward away from the big companies that are driving prices skyward and helping out your local economy. You don’t really vote once every four years; you vote every day with your wallet.

And the painful truth is this – your family and your household’s bottom line is in your control, and it’s your responsibility, not the larger population’s. So, to take the affordability of groceries and make it your primary election issue – there’s a selfishness at work there. I don’t think my bottom line is the government’s responsibility. Prices go up and down all the time, and I don’t have to understand why. I have to react appropriately when they do, and when I fail to do so, the repercussions are mine to suffer. If you truly believe in the free market (and that’s something in which conservatives say they believe), then should the high price of groceries really determine who gets your vote?

To me, it’s clear that grocery prices are never going to correct themselves until we see a massive sway in consumer behaviour, and I don’t foresee that happening very soon. Instead, we have the nation to my south voting for a supposed change by returning someone to the White House after a four-year break. It’s an electoral choice that I don’t see leading anywhere good, and pointing towards a whole host of bad. Grocery prices may become the least of everyone’s concern.