During an editorial meeting earlier this year, International Editor Sara Miller Llana and I started talking about a topic that seemed to be everywhere: affordability. In the United States, voters regularly cite cost of living as their top concern, and political analysts say it will likely be a central topic in this year’s midterm elections. But affordability isn’t just an American issue, Sara pointed out. People around the world, from Nigeria to the Netherlands, had been protesting cost-of-living stressors for months. And, at the time, massive protests around affordability in Iran were prompting a brutal government crackdown. Why We Wrote This Affordability isn’t just an American issue. In our magazine this week, we take a global approach to covering it. At the Monitor, one of our goals is to bring a global lens to topics like this one. That sort of perspective can help readers see in a more complete way the situations they face in their own homes, towns, and countries.…