Today I turn 74 and I've never seen peace and I've never, ever paid $70 to fill my gas tank. Death abroad and a war-driven inflationary economy at home.

The worst thing about war is the death and devastation. Five million Ukraines have fled the country.

My art is on Instagram @klonskyart

The worst thing about war is the death and the devastation it brings to the common people caught up in the middle of it.

I’m thinking about war as I turn 74 years old today.

I’ve never had a birthday where there wasn’t a war somewhere in the world.

May 8, 2022 marked 77 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe - VE Day. While Word War II claimed millions of lives on foreign soil, wars around the world is still a reality.

For example, he war in Ukraine is both a regional conflict and and big power proxy war.

The United Nations reports that five million Ukraines have fled their country.

Here at home the war has played a great part in the painful inflation, a 10% increase in the cost of food just in May over the same month a year ago.

We celebrated my birthday over breakfast out and spent seventy bucks to fill the gas tank.

What part does the war play in the cost of goods and services at home?

How long will working people be willing to pay it?

When Congress and the President agree to spend $40 billion more on the war in Ukraine, that’s a big check and not the only war check the U.S. has written.

Mark Zendi, Moody’s chief economist believes that the war in Ukraine is the main driver of U.S. inflation.

In his analysis, Zandi pushed back against other economists like Steven Rattner and Larry Summers, who have blamed the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, during which Americans received $1,400 stimulus checks, for contributing to inflation. In fact, Zandi believes that the American Rescue Plan represented only 0.1% year-over-year growth. (Fortune)

Zendi argues that the Ukraine War accounts for as much as a third of inflationary costs to the American people.

There are other costs as well.

Heavy costs to the lives of those caught in the middle of it.

There is the threat of the war expanding to other nations and to nuclear confrontation.

There is the loss of food to millions in the global south who have depended on Russian and Ukraine food production.

There is the likelihood that the war-driven inflationary economy will cost the Democrats control of Congress in November and the White House in 2024.

Over my 74 years I have learned that wars are never cost free.