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It seems to me politics are especially bad at countering inflation. People may be pissed off the "government isn't doing enough" to fix it. However, the levers the government can easily pull to fight inflation (raising taxes/interest rates, cut transfers/subsidies, lower consumption/wages) won't gain them any popularity points. Even worse, there are plenty of socially-desirable policies that'll make inflation worse: tax cuts, raises, loan forgiveness, more transfers. I'm grateful our system is even capable of doing unpopular things like raising interest rates. If monetary policy had heavier democratic influence, I'd worry high inflation would just be the long-term equilibrium.
Ontario's leader is under heavy fire for playing hardball and preventing educational workers from getting large raises. I don't know the details well, but couldn't one argue this is what fighting inflation looks like?
Beyond the conflating of money supply inflation, asset price inflation, and consumer price inflation, everyone experiences the erosion of their purchasing power differently and seems to have a weak understanding of how leads and lags affect apparent inflation levels and the tools policy makers can use to combat it.
You can run through all the factors on the supply side, demand side, supply chain issues, protectionism, changing consumer behaviors, shortages & gluts, and so on, and then try to wrap your head around the way money and debt is created/moved/destroyed in the global financial system and how that impacts the money available to consumers with different spending habits, and you'll only realize this is too complex to comprehend.
The simple solution is energy. Energy is directly included in the CPI basket as electricity and fuel, has a significant role other items like transit and air travel, and indirectly affects almost all goods and services as goods need to be manufactured, distributed, stored, and sold, plus people need to move to perform most services.
Fighting inflation generally, but especially for Europe now specifically, can not be done without cheap abundant energy. Draining the SPR was/is the best tool available to the US government to have an immediate effect on inflation however poor a decision that may be in the longer-term strategic context of sustained low oil and gas capex, deteriorating relations with OPEC and Russia, and the strength of the anti-fossil fuel political/social movement in the west.
With debt levels where they are, continued elevated inflation (4%-6%, which doesn't seem like a lot, but it adds up fast) is really the only path forward for major sovereign governments to remain solvent over the coming decade. As long as we are able to produce enough energy, we should avoid major fiscal crises and severe inflation, but that is looking more challenging as time goes by.
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