Prices everywhere have moved in one direction for a while now, but here they tend to move first and move further. That's not a coincidence or bad luck. It's the direct result of how inflation stacks on top of the shipping and freight costs that already make everything cost more before it ever reaches a store shelf.

A mainland price increase on fuel, materials, or goods doesn't just apply once here. It applies to the base cost, and then again to the cost of getting that product across the ocean, which means the same percentage increase lands harder on an island economy than it does somewhere connected by a highway.

Gregory Mannarino's core point applies directly here — inflation isn't an abstract number in a headline, it's a real, compounding cost that hits different places differently depending on how exposed they already are. An island depending on shipped goods is more exposed than most places, not less.

Understanding that this isn't random, and isn't going to reverse on its own, is the first step toward actually planning around it instead of waiting for prices to make sense again. They were never going to make sense the old way once inflation entered the picture at all.