Page F113From§Eachthe supper edition — 7 October 2026
Forty-one thousand dollars. That is what six years added to the annual cost of keeping a family in New Jersey, and do note where it went: childcare, housing, healthcare. Not holidays. Not a boat. Inelastic, every one of them, which is to say the household pays the new price because the household cannot stop buying. You will want to call that a failure of something. It is not. A cost of living is not a price one negotiates; it is the sum of the invoices that arrive whether or not one opens them, and 38.2 percent is what the Living Wage Institute puts on six years of them. Thirty-eight point two. New Jersey is no longer much cheaper than New York City — the gap closed, you see, and nobody had to build a thing to close it. The cost of living is on the ballot in under a month. And on 25 September a column ran under the headline "Why $4 gas is the bargain of a lifetime," urging Republicans to speak about affordability ... rather than change it. Speak. A handsome sum, forty-one thousand a year. The messaging is free. The forty-one thousand is not.
Deeper the well goes each winter. A man climbs down after the water.
“Thirty-eight percent in six years on daycare, rent and the doctor — that is your raise gone and then some, and then the rest of it. Now the guy who gets paid to explain things writes that four-dollar gas is the bargain of a lifetime and tells his side to talk about affordability better. Nobody ever paid a daycare bill with better wording, and that bill is on the kitchen table every single night between now and the election.”
“Nobody's saying costs aren't up — I'm saying 38.2 is a methodology, from an institute, and who funds that institute, exactly? Did I say that? That doesn't sound like me. Look, the gas piece was about defending our way of life, and affordability is fundamentally a communications challenge, which is what we've been communicating.”
The receipts
NAR puts the median first-time homebuyer at 40 years old - a record - and first-time buyers at a record-low 21% of the market National Association of Realtors, 2025 Profile
NJ no longer much cheaper than NYC — after cost of living skyrockets $41KA massive spike in the cost of childcare, housing and healthcare is breaking the bank for families in New Jersey — where costs have soared a whopping 38.2% over the past six years, according to the Living Wage Institute.
Donald Trump’s unpopularity and the economic struggles of voters have boosted Democrats. But with less than a month to go, there is no complacency For once, Democrats and Donald Trump might be in agreement: “Pretend I’m on the ticket,” the historically unpopular president has instructed supporters .
· Why $4 gas is the bargain of a lifetime from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.