Yesterday, StrongTowns.org posted the 2022 update to the “Christmas Cookie Inflation Index”, as they have in years past.
Strong Town’s founder, Charles Marohn, (whose thoughtful insights have occasionally been shared in the Daily Post) spends much of December each year making Christmas cookies, and he has been tracking the slowly increasing price of cookie ingredients.
Prior to outlining this year’s update, Mr. Marohn felt compelled to include the following disclaimer:
Nothing that I write here should be construed to be for or against any national political party or politician. I do not personally believe, and I am not trying to suggest, that the policies of a specific national politician or party has caused or alleviated inflation, gas prices, food prices, or the like. If anything, my comments and analysis here should be read in the context of a tension between top-down and bottom-up, not as a conflict between left or right of center.
He then included the following chart, indicating 12% growth in the CCII (Christmas Cookie Inflation Index) since last year.
Mr. Marohn’s CCII clearly indicates 29% inflation since 2019. Official government numbers (CPI-U) mistakenly estimates that inflation since 2019 has been only about 17%. Essentially, they are calling the rising cost of Christmas cookies irrelevant.
What we need to acknowledge, however, is the pressing need to consider the CCII “in the context of a tension between top-down and bottom-up”.
The battle over Christmas cookies is not primarily between the political left and the political right, although divergence can easily be pointed out. Bakers on the political left, for example, prefer cookies sweetened with honey, and made with organic, non-GMO, whole wheat flour.
Right-leaning bakers, meanwhile, tend to favor bleached white flour and plenty of white sugar.
But what about the tension between top-down and bottom-up?
In his op-eds on the Strong Towns website, Mr. Marohn consistently urges urban planners and community leaders to adopt ‘bottom-up’ development strategies, although what this means, exactly, is hard to explain. (So don’t ask.) When it comes to Christmas cookies, however, the ‘bottom-up’ strategy is pretty self-explanatory.
You start your cookies on the bottom rack, and then, when the bottoms have become lightly browned, you move the cookie sheets to the top rack.
If only urban planners would adopt a similar philosophy, the people living on the bottom rack would benefit from the same even treatment as the people living on the top rack, and life would seem a lot sweeter for everyone — regardless of the sweetener used.
Although maybe the people living on the top rack would feel burned?
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.