Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

It’s a challenge, but not impossible, to find topics on which Republicans and Democrats share the same view these days. Here’s one: election day means we can all celebrate the end of those infernal television commercials. 

My tolerance for these ads has never been high. One reason is the way their assertions oversimplify the pluses (or the minuses) of one candidate’s or the other’s stand on some issue.

It is not really a surprise, however, because politicians have long claimed they will solve some problem or their opponent is to blame for that problem.

We should all know by now politicians thrive on their claims of having simple solutions to what, in reality, are incredibly complex issues. Inflation and illegal immigration are two that come to mind.

One of those maddening commercials shows U.S. Representative Marianette Miller-Meeks, the Republican from Davenport (or Ottumwa) who represents Iowa’s first Congressional district. She is steering a shopping cart through a grocery store checkout lane. She says to the camera, “We gotta bring these prices down.”

The times and ways when politicians actually “bring down” the cost of anything are as rare as hen’s teeth. Many things factor into the cost of goods and services. Yes, taxes are one of them. So is a president’s grain embargo on a foreign buyer. But so is consumer demand. So are corporate profits. So are the effects of the world marketplace for commodities like oil.

Were my parents still with us, I would be eager for their take on price increases. They became consumers during the Great Depression, and they had decades of experience and perspective on price increases, wage growth and economic security.

Following my parents’ deaths 40 years ago, I found eye-catching evidence squirreled away in their belongings. It was the receipt from Laughlin Hospital in Kirksville, Missouri for my mother’s labor and delivery and our hospital stay for the first few days after my triumphant arrival in 1950.

The receipt showed I was a bargain.

The hospital charges were an astounding $100 or so. That is about $1,300 today when adjusted for inflation. In contrast to the cost of my birth, a statement arrived last week for my wife’s visit to Iowa Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines this summer. The bill came to $31,000 for an emergency room visit, two nights in the hospital, and assorted tests and procedures. Adjusted for inflation, that $31,000 hospital stay would have cost about $1,300 back in 1950.

That’s inflation for you. But it is ludicrous to blame Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon—or Joe Biden—for the surge in medical costs or for the nation’s periodic bouts with inflation.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most people hunkered down in their homes and rarely ventured out. A COVID vaccine was not yet available, and thousands of people were dying each day. In all, about 1.2 million Americans have succumbed to the novel coronavirus.

That caused the bottom to fall out of the demand for gasoline, and oil companies responded by cutting their prices. When newly developed vaccines began providing people with a huge dose of confidence, the pandemic eased and pent-up consumer demand and product shortages caused prices to rise dramatically.

Corporations capitalized on this by keeping their prices high—high enough to produce record profits—even after supply caught up with demand. For evidence of this, look at the record profits for Apple, Exxon Mobil, Walmart and Amazon in last fiscal year. That is the way of capitalism. That is Economics 101. Market forces, not the White House, set prices.

Another example of oversimplification involves the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, an outspoken critic of what some call the United States’ open borders.

The Washington Post published an in-depth examination on October 26 of how the South Africa native did not have a legal right to work in the United States at the beginning of his career as a tech entrepreneur. Musk was allowed in the U.S. after being accepted at Stanford University.

But he dropped out without ever enrolling for classes, according to former business associates, court records and company documents. By leaving school, Musk did not have a legal basis to remain in the U.S., the Post said, and he would have had to leave the country, according to immigration law experts.

An investor in Musk’s first company put it to the Post this way: “Perhaps naively we never examined whether he was a legal citizen. He had a burning desire to be successful. We were investing in in him. […] We felt that he was really driven.”

That “really driven” illegal immigrant who lived in his office and showered at a YMCA early in his career was motivated by his quest for the American dream. That same motivation leads thousands of immigrants to sneak across the U.S. southern border, to share housing with other immigrants and to work long, hard hours, all in their a quest for successful American lives.

But the TV ads about illegal immigrants do not provide that important context. The ads do not make it clear many of these immigrants simply remain after their visas end—just as Musk, the open-border critic, did.