Minnesotans feeling the pinch of inflation
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The price of groceries, gasoline and other products is going up. The inflation rate could hit 5 percent this year, higher than it has been for decades.
Evan Frost | MPR News file |
By Mark Zdechlik
People on fixed incomes may be the first to notice higher prices. John Erickson, 72, of St. Paul certainly has.
“Like gas, like the food prices. I don't have anything good to say about what's going on right now,” Erickson said as he made his way into a popular discount grocer in Maplewood.
Alice Connelly, 74, was also shopping that day.
“Shredded lettuce for tacos,” Connelly blurted out. “The last time I bought a bag. It was $1.69. It was $2.34 yesterday. And I thought wow, that's quite the increase.”
Connelly and Erickson remember the 1970s when inflation eroded people’s buying power. A measure of the increased cost of goods and services called the Consumer Price Index or CPI peaked at nearly 14 percent in 1980.
“We're a long way away from 12 or 14 or 16 percent inflation. A very long way,” said Brandeis University professor Stephen Cecchetti, who worked at the Council of Economic Advisers when inflation was front-page news, which it has not been for a very long time. But for many people, it’s the first time they’ve seen such rapidly rising prices. | |
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| University of Minnesota professor and McArthur Genius Grant recipient Damien Fair inside of the new University of Minnesota Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain on Wednesday.Evan Frost | MPR News |
By Tim Nelson
A new center to nurture unusual collaborations to explore brain development opened Monday in Minneapolis, on the site of a former children’s hospital.
The Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain allows health care providers, neuroscientists, and educators to try to answer enduring questions of how brains are shaped by their environments.
One of the center’s leaders, Damien Fair, has long felt the limits of working as one cognitive neuroscientist against all the problems he wants to solve.
Fair, a professor in both the University of Minnesota's College of Education and in the pediatrics department of the U's Medical School, reflected on his work as a sizable squad of construction workers put the finishing touches on the new $60 million institute that will welcome researchers investigating how we become who we are.
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U of M to offer free tuition to many Native Americans. Starting in the fall of 2022, the University of Minnesota will offer “substantial financial support,” including in many cases completely free tuition, to enrolled members of the state’s 11 tribal nations.
New COVID rules for international travelers. The U.S. has come up with new rules and regulations for travelers flying in from other countries, to take effect on Monday, Nov. 8. Here's a rundown of the new protocols.
Media makes fresh plea for access to ex-cop Kim Potter's trial. News organizations made a fresh plea Monday to the judge overseeing the case of a former officer charged in the death of Daunte Wright, asking to allow live video coverage of the trial because of the continuing threat of COVID-19 and the strong public interest.
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