Inflation is finally being felt. I’m torn, because the school of thought I adhere to said it was coming all along, so I have been vindicated, but I never wanted it and still don’t. I was correct, and wanted so bad to be wrong.
I can’t tell you the degree of pain everyone will feel or how long it will continue. That largely depends on how dense the government is in responding to it. Anything they do will likely prolong it and make it worse. They would be best to stay out of it.
If you don’t believe me, that’s fine. If you’re searching for food on empty shelves, just go back home and wait for the guy with dementia to tell you what to do next.
For the rest of you, you know what you need best. You need to trust yourself to know your own needs.
Everyone should come to grips with this concept across the board. Instead of thinking you know what is better for your neighbor, your friend, or your family, you should simply try to help them and trust them where they are.
Here’s the deal, in every single service, commodity, or capital good, the degree of need will be determined by a price. The more abundant something is, the less it will cost, relative to what it otherwise would cost. The less abundant, the higher the price will climb. Those who need it most will pay the premium, and those who do not, will find alternatives or ration what they need to preserve it most.
This will help producers get clear signals in terms of where their services and productivity is most needed. It will help laborers find jobs in industries and sectors where there is real demand.
Any program that tries to extend jobs where they aren’t needed, or pays people to stay home, will prolong and deepen the pain. Any subsidies going to any industry will do the same as it has the same general effect of sustaining people, jobs, and production where they are not demanded by actual purchasers of the goods.
Lets try an analogy.
What if a program was keeping people in the agriculture industry, specifically in the growing of beets, when nobody wants to buy beets for anything, especially eating them? Government has to steal from taxpayers, or steal the value of their money, and send it to famers to grow something that will only rot in the field. Related, those same farmers might be better growing corn, soybean, strawberries or any number of consumable goods in those fields that would actually meet the needs of the consumer.
Can you see how this could be problematic?
Government interfering in markets creates those problems, exacerbating and prolonging them in ways that would never be sustained in their absence.
The key is understanding this, and also that the federal government is unlikely to step aside and let us be free. They will likely feel some inner need to show they are doing something…anything…and we will all suffer for it.
We’re feeling the effects of that right now, with our decades of excessive spending and creation of new dollars, it only takes a stroll down the grocery aisle or a quick price quote for a new home project like a fence or some landscaping to see that everything is going up in price.
This is not “Biden’s inflation,” though his administration and the legislative branch have done nothing to address it. It isn’t just Trump’s fault. Every single presidential administration in my lifetime has grown the budget in their time in office and only Clinton ever had a surplus, meaning the federal government stole more of your money than it needed. Notable is that it didn’t last. You never got your money back and the value of the dollar was never returned to your pockets.
There are reasons to understand why they do this. To be the person to tell the country they will have to embrace some hard times is unpopular, even if true. It would be political suicide. So in the purest form of politics, they protect themselves and their political career at the expense of what is good and right. They kick the can down the road, and since it takes years or even decades for inflation to catch up to the populace, they can live in a daze of believing they are good times, when disaster is brewing.
If you have any doubts, how many of you struggled significantly while our federal government was fighting wars or supporting wars in several different countries? There were no calls for riveters or for rationing. The reason for that is because the government created money to ease the cost, and we are beginning to feel that pain now.
When the housing bubble collapsed, they printed money to bail out the banks.
When COVID hit our shores, the government printed money to hide the effects of their imposed lockdowns and supply chain disruptions.
This has been going on for decades before Bush invented his “axis of evil,” but it has become exponentially worse since that time.
If I’m correct, this is only the very beginning of what could be a very painful adjustment.
They have extended the good times artificially, by creating more bubbles that are unsustainable, extending the quality and quantity of soft people. So hard times are coming.
I hope you’re ready.
Stop spending money on frivolous luxuries that do not add value to your life. Start trying to source your necessities as locally as possible. Good luck.
Enjoy this? Share it at least once…direct to a friend, or on your social media site of choice. Help spread the word! Subscribe below or join the Other Hands to make sure you don’t miss any new posts, and remember to like, share, and comment.
