GMA Deals and Steals Won't Fix Your Grocery Bill — gma deals…

Every weekday morning, millions of Americans tune in to "Good Morning America" for a segment that feels like a small miracle: Deals and Steals. Tory Johnson unveils deep discounts—40%, 50%, sometimes 70% off—on everything from air fryers to sneakers to skincare. The comments section fills with gratitude. "Finally, something I can afford." "Thank you, Tory!" It's a genuinely useful segment. It's also a perfect window into why your paycheck feels smaller every month, no matter how many deals you clip. Here's the uncomfortable math. The Federal Reserve spent 2022 and 2023 hiking interest rates to cool inflation. It worked—sort of. Headline inflation has fallen from its 9.1% peak in June 2022 to around 3%. That sounds like relief until you remember what "cooling" means. Prices didn't drop. They just stopped climbing as fast. Groceries are still roughly 25% more expensive than they were four years ago. Rent is up over 20% in most metros. And the Fed's rate hikes made borrowing more expensive for everyone—especially the people already stretched thin. That's the trap. The same rate hikes that tamed inflation also pushed credit card APRs past 20%, the highest in decades. Auto loans jumped. Mortgages crossed 7%. So the household budget gets squeezed from both ends: higher prices at the register and higher interest on the debt you took on to cover them. Now look at wages. Average hourly earnings have risen about 4% year over year—decent on paper. But adjusted for inflation, real wages for many workers are roughly flat compared to 2019. The raises happened. The purchasing power didn't follow. If you feel like you're running faster just to stay in place, you're not imagining it. That's the actual definition of a paycheck that doesn't keep up. Enter Deals and Steals. It's not a scam—the discounts are real, and for a family trying to buy holiday gifts or replace a broken blender, saving 50% matters. But notice what the segment is really doing. It's a pressure valve. It lets us feel like we're winning a rigged game by becoming smarter shoppers. Clip the coupon. Refresh the page. Catch the deal before it sells out. The problem is that no coupon code fixes a structural gap between what things cost and what people earn. You can't bargain-hunt your way out of rent. There is no promo code for insulin. The deal economy is thriving precisely because the regular economy isn't working for ordinary households. And the Fed knows this. Its own surveys show that a large share of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense. That's not a spending problem. That's a math problem, and it's baked into the system. So watch the segment. Grab the air fryer. Save twenty bucks. Just don't mistake the dopamine hit of a discount for actual financial stability. The deals are real. So is the squeeze. Only one of them gets a TV segment. **The bottom line:** Deals and Steals is a bandage on a wound that needs stitches. Until wages catch up to the real cost of living—rent, food, healthcare, and the interest on the debt we use to bridge the gap—Americans will keep celebrating 50% off while quietly falling behind. A discount is not a raise, and a coupon is not a policy.