OK, smarty pants - how would YOU fight inflation?

[as seen on tv]

Photo above - Federal Reserve governor Gregory Becker jets to his Hawaiian vacation home after pushing Silicon Valley Bank into insolvency.
Not shown - ordinary working people being evicted from their homes due to spiraling mortgage rates.
​

When you stop to think about it, it's kind of amazing that America never has a national dialogue on questions like this. Inflation and crippling interest rates. President Sleepy Joe Biden is mute on mortgage rates (he allegedly murmured something in his sleep about “I own all my homes free and clear – so I don't have to worry about mortgage rates”. Allegedly . . . )

Even congress seems disinterested. There's always time for hearings about Hunters Laptop, the Buffalo Head Shaman, or the dangers posed by “invasive Burmese pythons”. But actually, I expect to encounter crippling inflation and sky high unaffordable mortgage rates before I run into a python or the shaman. Most Floridians too, I'd wager . . .

Bizarrely, we have simply signed over our nation's economic future to bureaucracies like the Federal Reserve. An unelected gang of self described experts, who say they are smarter than us. One of those Fed governors was just caught in Hawaii where he fled for R&R after driving Silicon Valley Bank into bankruptcy. I have to admit that IS smart. I wish I was genius enough to be able to ruin a bank, throw thousands of people out of work, then chill in Hawaii. You rock, Federal Reserve guys!

Let me go out on a limb - I'm not comfortable with this stuff. And I don't think the founding fathers would be either. If you woke up Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin from their slumber, and asked them “Should some unelected guys, accountable to no one, set interest rates for all borrowers in the nation?” . . . well if you DID wake them, they'd probably roll their eyes and ask “This is a joke right? We never put ANYTHING like that in the Constitution . .. “

Before someone starts sounding off about the dangers of allowing Congress to set interest rates, let me quickly agree. No way do I want any of THOSE motley, ignorant, attention whores in charge of my interest rates either.

But in fact, that's what's already happened. With huge deficit spending, and national debt now more than $100,000 for every man woman and child in America, that's exactly how we arrived at this point. The more you spend, the higher prices go. It's economics 101 - too much money chasing a finite amount of goods and services. It guarantees inflation, sooner or later.

Our government (Federal, state, and municipal) is addicted to spending money we could NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS legitimately collect through taxes. Trillions and trillions added to the national debt annually, by politicians in DC. If you want to think clearly about why there's huge inflation, and a bunch of suits are “fighting” it by raising interest rates to the moon, look no further.

Here's a thought experiment. Suppose you stopped random people on the street and asked how to fix inflation. “Would you rather have the US government triple your interest rates, in the hopes of triggering unemployment, as its strategy? Or insist that government spending not exceed what citizens agree to pay in taxes?” Which answer do you think you'd get?

Probably not the same answer provided by politicians, who use spending entitlements as a strategy for perpetual re-election to their positions. Probably not the same answer as the Fed Board of governors, who take first class jets to their Hawaiian vacation homes after their banks go belly up.

Are you okay with deficits that can never be repaid? With yo-yo interest rates that make owning your own home out of reach? And unelected faceless men deciding your economic fate?

Then take the blue pill and stop thinking about these questions. Instead, tune in to the Trump Trial of the Century – over a fraud $130,000 accounting entry. And hearings to reveal "the truth" about Hunter Biden. And the most important question the networks can imagine - who will be running for president in 2024? Someone who won't be able to fix these financial fiascos . . . .

CNN and Fox are holding 24/7 coverage on all of these pressing topics. Enjoy . . .

 

[worldlymrb]

OK, smarty pants - how would YOU fight inflation?

Stop monetizing debt and produce more goods/services. Simple as that.

 

[Raoul_Luke]

Someone incredibly smart was recently asked. Tucker Carlson covered interest rate policy in his interview with Elon Musk. You know how I know Elon is incredibly smart? He gave the same answer I would (and @worldlymrb did). You always hear the "experts," even conservative ones, saying "you just have to raise rates and take the recession." That's not what Musk said:

TUCKER CARSON: So you've seen a couple regional bank collapses. And we've been told that's not a big deal, that these are isolated and each one collapsed for unique reasons, it's not systemic in any sense. What's your sense of the stability of the American banking system?

ELON MUSK: Well, it's actually at this point a global banking system problem. So, we have a situation here where it's not merely -- it's not the canary in the coal mine has died but the miners are starting to die, too. So Silicon Valley Bank collapsing overnight is one hell of a big canary, it's more of a turkey, it's not like some small fry thing.

I think there is a serious danger with the global banking system. There's a strong argument that the -- if you were to actually market the portfolios of the banks, the loans, and whatnot, that the entire banking industry would have negative equity.

CARLSON: It feels that way.

MUSK: Yeah. So if you look at, say, commercial real estate, like offices and whatnot, the whole work-from-home thing has substantially reduced office usage in cities around the world. And, you know, I think San Francisco's at 40% -- San Francisco's like an extreme example but I think it's like 40% vacancy. Even New York has -- I think almost all cities at this point have record vacancies of commercial real estate. So commercial real estate used to be something that was a grade-A asset that if a bank had commercial real estate holdings, that those would be considered the highest security. The safest.

CARLSON: They were.

MUSK: Some of the safest, you know, assets you could have. Now that is not the case anymore. One company after another is canceling their leases, or not renewing their leases. Or if they go bankrupt, there's nothing for the bank who owns that real estate to go after because, you know, they were a previously strong company now dead, what do you go after at that point?

So we really haven't seen the commercial real estate shoe drop. That's more like an anvil, not a shoe. So the stuff we've seen so far hasn't even actually hasn't even -- it's only slightly real estate portfolio degradation. But that will become a very serious thing later this year, in my view.

I think if we see, which we're likely to see, a drop in house prices, because the interest rates are too high, and for most people when buying a house they look at the monthly payment.

In 30-year-mortgages the vast majority is in interest. So if the Fed rate is high -- you have a high base interest rate -- effectively the price you can pay for the house drops because now you have to pay more interest, which means that, if you've got a fixed monthly payment, you can now afford to buy a house for less money. It effectively drops the prices of houses.

This is the kind of thing that tends to accelerate. So then you can get negative equity in the home market as well. And so if banks end up having loan losses in both their commercial and -- well they're definitely going to have loan losses in their professional portfolio but also in their mortgage portfolio, this is a dire situation.

There is a solution to mitigate the magnitude of the damage here, which is for the Fed to lower the rate. But they raised the rate again. Now, if I recall correctly, which I, you know, important caveat I think the last time the Fed raised rates going into a recession was 1929.

CARLSON: What happened then?

MUSK: Yeah, the Great Depression.

But here's the kicker:

ELON MUSK: So, there's not some magical cure for getting rid of inflation except to increase the productivity, the output of goods and services. So what is money? You've got these sort of -- it's basically numbers in a database that come up some total. Then you've got the output of goods and services of the economy, and as long as the ratio of money to ratio of goods and services stays, if that stays constant, you have no inflation. If you add more money to the system faster than you increase goods and services, then you have inflation.

Hmmmm, sounds like some other absolute genius who hangs around here. Go take a look at my posts on inflation (and interest rates). Everyone makes the same mistake our OPer did here by suggesting "inflation is too much money chasing a finite amount of goods and services." But you can always (ALWAYS) produce more (good and services are never "finite"), precisely as Musk suggested to Carlson.

We have "stagflation" where the economy is sluggish (and businesses in precarious financial shape) and our "genius" leadership (in both parties but particularly Brandon the economic dunce) think "we just have to take the recession, because we have to lower demand." WTF? Why? That's a prescription for depression. Why not increase supply instead. Most of our inflation is due to high energy prices, and regardless of the (insipid) "Putin price hike" BS it's primarily the idiot President's war on fossil fuels that is to blame for our high energy prices. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either stupid or lying - we could easily produce our way to lower inflation by letting domestic production rip. Much of the rest is high fertilizer prices due to the Ukraine war. Again, it is simplistic to blame Putin for interrupting the supply of fertilizer from Ukraine and Russia, but the fact is, that was as good a reason as any to avoid the war (alright, that's not as good a reason as preserving a half million lives and 50% of the Ukrainian infrastructure but work with me here). Why didn't our idiot POTUS offer to enter three way peace talks with Russia and Ukraine BEFORE THE FREAKING INVASION??? All we would have had to do was agree to stay the f*ck out of Ukraine and ensure they would never be a member of NATO. There's a reason Putin didn't invade while Trump was POTUS - Trump was skeptical of the need for NATO, at least as a bulwark against Russia, with whom we should be trading - not warring. Of course the Democrats demonized Russia as having denied Clinton her rightful Presidency, and cling to that fallacy even after seeing the mounting evidence that she (and her minions in the deep state) fabricated the whole thing in an effort to defeat Trump.

So as usual, the Democrats have created a mess and are ideologically opposed to the only painless remedies for the mess they made, so we the people suffer - whether it's poor people of color in the blue cities suffering poverty and sky high crime rates, or the middle class taking it in the shorts in the form of high grocery and utility prices - it's us who pay the price for the disastrous Democratic agenda. And then we keep voting them into office because the media blare the propaganda 24/7 that the Republicans are the root of all evil and the Democrats are the only ones who can fix our problems...and so we keep giving the democrats power and the problems keep getting worse.

And, of course, a guy like Musk who actually does have all the answers is vilified by the left (and the media), and, of course, is ignored - because we don't really need, well, real solutions, do we? We have the democrats' endless virtue signaling to applaud like a bunch of barking seals.



Oh, and don't forget to enjoy the decline...

 

[worldlymrb]

Oh, and don't forget to enjoy the decline...

The future for humanity is you will own nothing and eat bugs until your exterminated so Global elites can merge with AI and become gods so they can build back better with a genetically modified sub-human/slave species.

 

[georgephillip]

RD Wolff offers three alternative solutions to rising inflation that DON'T involve interest rate increases.

Number 1:

"For the first, we return briefly to World War II.

"U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration grasped the risk of inflation during this period as the supply of many consumer goods shrank relative to the demand for them.

"The war effort was diverting many productive resources away from consumer goods and toward munitions and other defense products.

"Had the government allowed the market to handle the prospective shortage of consumer goods, an inflation of their prices would have resulted.

"Rich Americans would have bid up the prices of scarce consumer goods, rendering them unaffordable for middle- and lower-income people.

"That is how markets work.

"They favor the rich (who return the favor by funding economists and others to promote markets as marvels of 'efficiency')."

https://www.rdwolff.com/there_are_b...dress_inflation_than_by_hiking_interest_rates

 

[Raoul_Luke]

The future for humanity is you will own nothing and eat bugs until your exterminated so Global elites can merge with AI and become gods so they can build back better with a genetically modified sub-human/slave species.

And the elites will live like potentates in publicly owned (walled) palaces and traveling to exotic resorts to not eat bugs while conspiring with each other to ratchet up the authoritarianism all while saying "we're just like you - we don't 'own' anything either."

 

[worldlymrb]

Number 1:

"For the first, we return briefly to World War II.

"U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration grasped the risk of inflation during this period as the supply of many consumer goods shrank relative to the demand for them.

"The war effort was diverting many productive resources away from consumer goods and toward munitions and other defense products.

"Had the government allowed the market to handle the prospective shortage of consumer goods, an inflation of their prices would have resulted.

"Rich Americans would have bid up the prices of scarce consumer goods, rendering them unaffordable for middle- and lower-income people.

"That is how markets work.

"They favor the rich (who return the favor by funding economists and others to promote markets as marvels of 'efficiency')."

https://www.rdwolff.com/there_are_b...dress_inflation_than_by_hiking_interest_rates

You are spot on!

Programmable digital currency (CBDC) is just a modern day version of a ration card as America transitions to owning nothing and eating bugs.

 

[EatTheRich]

Someone incredibly smart was recently asked. Tucker Carlson covered interest rate policy in his interview with Elon Musk. You know how I know Elon is incredibly smart? He gave the same answer I would (and @worldlymrb did). You always hear the "experts," even conservative ones, saying "you just have to raise rates and take the recession." That's not what Musk said:

TUCKER CARSON: So you've seen a couple regional bank collapses. And we've been told that's not a big deal, that these are isolated and each one collapsed for unique reasons, it's not systemic in any sense. What's your sense of the stability of the American banking system?

ELON MUSK: Well, it's actually at this point a global banking system problem. So, we have a situation here where it's not merely -- it's not the canary in the coal mine has died but the miners are starting to die, too. So Silicon Valley Bank collapsing overnight is one hell of a big canary, it's more of a turkey, it's not like some small fry thing.

I think there is a serious danger with the global banking system. There's a strong argument that the -- if you were to actually market the portfolios of the banks, the loans, and whatnot, that the entire banking industry would have negative equity.

CARLSON: It feels that way.

MUSK: Yeah. So if you look at, say, commercial real estate, like offices and whatnot, the whole work-from-home thing has substantially reduced office usage in cities around the world. And, you know, I think San Francisco's at 40% -- San Francisco's like an extreme example but I think it's like 40% vacancy. Even New York has -- I think almost all cities at this point have record vacancies of commercial real estate. So commercial real estate used to be something that was a grade-A asset that if a bank had commercial real estate holdings, that those would be considered the highest security. The safest.

CARLSON: They were.

MUSK: Some of the safest, you know, assets you could have. Now that is not the case anymore. One company after another is canceling their leases, or not renewing their leases. Or if they go bankrupt, there's nothing for the bank who owns that real estate to go after because, you know, they were a previously strong company now dead, what do you go after at that point?

So we really haven't seen the commercial real estate shoe drop. That's more like an anvil, not a shoe. So the stuff we've seen so far hasn't even actually hasn't even -- it's only slightly real estate portfolio degradation. But that will become a very serious thing later this year, in my view.

I think if we see, which we're likely to see, a drop in house prices, because the interest rates are too high, and for most people when buying a house they look at the monthly payment.

In 30-year-mortgages the vast majority is in interest. So if the Fed rate is high -- you have a high base interest rate -- effectively the price you can pay for the house drops because now you have to pay more interest, which means that, if you've got a fixed monthly payment, you can now afford to buy a house for less money. It effectively drops the prices of houses.

This is the kind of thing that tends to accelerate. So then you can get negative equity in the home market as well. And so if banks end up having loan losses in both their commercial and -- well they're definitely going to have loan losses in their professional portfolio but also in their mortgage portfolio, this is a dire situation.

There is a solution to mitigate the magnitude of the damage here, which is for the Fed to lower the rate. But they raised the rate again. Now, if I recall correctly, which I, you know, important caveat I think the last time the Fed raised rates going into a recession was 1929.

CARLSON: What happened then?

MUSK: Yeah, the Great Depression.

But here's the kicker:

ELON MUSK: So, there's not some magical cure for getting rid of inflation except to increase the productivity, the output of goods and services. So what is money? You've got these sort of -- it's basically numbers in a database that come up some total. Then you've got the output of goods and services of the economy, and as long as the ratio of money to ratio of goods and services stays, if that stays constant, you have no inflation. If you add more money to the system faster than you increase goods and services, then you have inflation.

Hmmmm, sounds like some other absolute genius who hangs around here. Go take a look at my posts on inflation (and interest rates). Everyone makes the same mistake our OPer did here by suggesting "inflation is too much money chasing a finite amount of goods and services." But you can always (ALWAYS) produce more (good and services are never "finite"), precisely as Musk suggested to Carlson.

We have "stagflation" where the economy is sluggish (and businesses in precarious financial shape) and our "genius" leadership (in both parties but particularly Brandon the economic dunce) think "we just have to take the recession, because we have to lower demand." WTF? Why? That's a prescription for depression. Why not increase supply instead. Most of our inflation is due to high energy prices, and regardless of the (insipid) "Putin price hike" BS it's primarily the idiot President's war on fossil fuels that is to blame for our high energy prices. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either stupid or lying - we could easily produce our way to lower inflation by letting domestic production rip. Much of the rest is high fertilizer prices due to the Ukraine war. Again, it is simplistic to blame Putin for interrupting the supply of fertilizer from Ukraine and Russia, but the fact is, that was as good a reason as any to avoid the war (alright, that's not as good a reason as preserving a half million lives and 50% of the Ukrainian infrastructure but work with me here). Why didn't our idiot POTUS offer to enter three way peace talks with Russia and Ukraine BEFORE THE FREAKING INVASION??? All we would have had to do was agree to stay the f*ck out of Ukraine and ensure they would never be a member of NATO. There's a reason Putin didn't invade while Trump was POTUS - Trump was skeptical of the need for NATO, at least as a bulwark against Russia, with whom we should be trading - not warring. Of course the Democrats demonized Russia as having denied Clinton her rightful Presidency, and cling to that fallacy even after seeing the mounting evidence that she (and her minions in the deep state) fabricated the whole thing in an effort to defeat Trump.

So as usual, the Democrats have created a mess and are ideologically opposed to the only painless remedies for the mess they made, so we the people suffer - whether it's poor people of color in the blue cities suffering poverty and sky high crime rates, or the middle class taking it in the shorts in the form of high grocery and utility prices - it's us who pay the price for the disastrous Democratic agenda. And then we keep voting them into office because the media blare the propaganda 24/7 that the Republicans are the root of all evil and the Democrats are the only ones who can fix our problems...and so we keep giving the democrats power and the problems keep getting worse.

And, of course, a guy like Musk who actually does have all the answers is vilified by the left (and the media), and, of course, is ignored - because we don't really need, well, real solutions, do we? We have the democrats' endless virtue signaling to applaud like a bunch of barking seals.

View attachment 74684

Oh, and don't forget to enjoy the decline...

There is no way under capitalism to increase supply without tremendous deficit spending and militarization of the economy, since the demand is simply insufficient to support peacetime industrial expansion. Addressing inflation without raising interest rates has to start with nationalization of the means of credit and move on that basis to a planned economy based on state ownership of the commanding heights of industry.

 

[worldlymrb]

There is no way under capitalism to increase supply without tremendous deficit spending and militarization of the economy, since the demand is simply insufficient to support peacetime industrial expansion. Addressing inflation without raising interest rates has to start with nationalization of the means of credit and move on that basis to a planned economy based on state ownership of the commanding heights of industry.

You would be surprised how you can increase the supply of goods and services with cheap energy and making people actually work for their food clothing, shelter and sexual transition.

 

[EatTheRich]

You would be surprised how you can increase the supply of goods and services with cheap energy and making people actually work for their food clothing, shelter and sexual transition.

In other words, you think bringing wages way, way down (hence cheap energy and other commodities due to workers doing more work for less pay) is the answer. But of course that just means lower consumer demand which means it is less profitable to produce even if production is cheaper. A country that chooses to go the route of Nazi Germany (making people work for less) to stimulate production will find itself obliged to stimulate production via war spending, to borrow money (stimulating inflation) to do so, and to go to war to "renegotiate" the loans it is unable to afford.

 

[as seen on tv]

Stop monetizing debt and produce more goods/services. Simple as that.

We are of one mind

 

[as seen on tv]

RD Wolff offers three alternative solutions to rising inflation that DON'T involve interest rate increases.

Number 1:

"For the first, we return briefly to World War II.

"U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration grasped the risk of inflation during this period as the supply of many consumer goods shrank relative to the demand for them.

"The war effort was diverting many productive resources away from consumer goods and toward munitions and other defense products.

"Had the government allowed the market to handle the prospective shortage of consumer goods, an inflation of their prices would have resulted.

"Rich Americans would have bid up the prices of scarce consumer goods, rendering them unaffordable for middle- and lower-income people.

"That is how markets work.

"They favor the rich (who return the favor by funding economists and others to promote markets as marvels of 'efficiency')."

https://www.rdwolff.com/there_are_b...dress_inflation_than_by_hiking_interest_rates

So what do you propose to ration? The fastest inflating items? Health care? College? Homes and apartments?

 

[as seen on tv]

Someone incredibly smart was recently asked. Tucker Carlson covered interest rate policy in his interview with Elon Musk. You know how I know Elon is incredibly smart? He gave the same answer I would (and @worldlymrb did). You always hear the "experts," even conservative ones, saying "you just have to raise rates and take the recession." That's not what Musk said:

TUCKER CARSON: So you've seen a couple regional bank collapses. And we've been told that's not a big deal, that these are isolated and each one collapsed for unique reasons, it's not systemic in any sense. What's your sense of the stability of the American banking system?

ELON MUSK: Well, it's actually at this point a global banking system problem. So, we have a situation here where it's not merely -- it's not the canary in the coal mine has died but the miners are starting to die, too. So Silicon Valley Bank collapsing overnight is one hell of a big canary, it's more of a turkey, it's not like some small fry thing.

I think there is a serious danger with the global banking system. There's a strong argument that the -- if you were to actually market the portfolios of the banks, the loans, and whatnot, that the entire banking industry would have negative equity.

CARLSON: It feels that way.

MUSK: Yeah. So if you look at, say, commercial real estate, like offices and whatnot, the whole work-from-home thing has substantially reduced office usage in cities around the world. And, you know, I think San Francisco's at 40% -- San Francisco's like an extreme example but I think it's like 40% vacancy. Even New York has -- I think almost all cities at this point have record vacancies of commercial real estate. So commercial real estate used to be something that was a grade-A asset that if a bank had commercial real estate holdings, that those would be considered the highest security. The safest.

CARLSON: They were.

MUSK: Some of the safest, you know, assets you could have. Now that is not the case anymore. One company after another is canceling their leases, or not renewing their leases. Or if they go bankrupt, there's nothing for the bank who owns that real estate to go after because, you know, they were a previously strong company now dead, what do you go after at that point?

So we really haven't seen the commercial real estate shoe drop. That's more like an anvil, not a shoe. So the stuff we've seen so far hasn't even actually hasn't even -- it's only slightly real estate portfolio degradation. But that will become a very serious thing later this year, in my view.

I think if we see, which we're likely to see, a drop in house prices, because the interest rates are too high, and for most people when buying a house they look at the monthly payment.

In 30-year-mortgages the vast majority is in interest. So if the Fed rate is high -- you have a high base interest rate -- effectively the price you can pay for the house drops because now you have to pay more interest, which means that, if you've got a fixed monthly payment, you can now afford to buy a house for less money. It effectively drops the prices of houses.

This is the kind of thing that tends to accelerate. So then you can get negative equity in the home market as well. And so if banks end up having loan losses in both their commercial and -- well they're definitely going to have loan losses in their professional portfolio but also in their mortgage portfolio, this is a dire situation.

There is a solution to mitigate the magnitude of the damage here, which is for the Fed to lower the rate. But they raised the rate again. Now, if I recall correctly, which I, you know, important caveat I think the last time the Fed raised rates going into a recession was 1929.

CARLSON: What happened then?

MUSK: Yeah, the Great Depression.

But here's the kicker:

ELON MUSK: So, there's not some magical cure for getting rid of inflation except to increase the productivity, the output of goods and services. So what is money? You've got these sort of -- it's basically numbers in a database that come up some total. Then you've got the output of goods and services of the economy, and as long as the ratio of money to ratio of goods and services stays, if that stays constant, you have no inflation. If you add more money to the system faster than you increase goods and services, then you have inflation.

Hmmmm, sounds like some other absolute genius who hangs around here. Go take a look at my posts on inflation (and interest rates). Everyone makes the same mistake our OPer did here by suggesting "inflation is too much money chasing a finite amount of goods and services." But you can always (ALWAYS) produce more (good and services are never "finite"), precisely as Musk suggested to Carlson.

We have "stagflation" where the economy is sluggish (and businesses in precarious financial shape) and our "genius" leadership (in both parties but particularly Brandon the economic dunce) think "we just have to take the recession, because we have to lower demand." WTF? Why? That's a prescription for depression. Why not increase supply instead. Most of our inflation is due to high energy prices, and regardless of the (insipid) "Putin price hike" BS it's primarily the idiot President's war on fossil fuels that is to blame for our high energy prices. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either stupid or lying - we could easily produce our way to lower inflation by letting domestic production rip. Much of the rest is high fertilizer prices due to the Ukraine war. Again, it is simplistic to blame Putin for interrupting the supply of fertilizer from Ukraine and Russia, but the fact is, that was as good a reason as any to avoid the war (alright, that's not as good a reason as preserving a half million lives and 50% of the Ukrainian infrastructure but work with me here). Why didn't our idiot POTUS offer to enter three way peace talks with Russia and Ukraine BEFORE THE FREAKING INVASION??? All we would have had to do was agree to stay the f*ck out of Ukraine and ensure they would never be a member of NATO. There's a reason Putin didn't invade while Trump was POTUS - Trump was skeptical of the need for NATO, at least as a bulwark against Russia, with whom we should be trading - not warring. Of course the Democrats demonized Russia as having denied Clinton her rightful Presidency, and cling to that fallacy even after seeing the mounting evidence that she (and her minions in the deep state) fabricated the whole thing in an effort to defeat Trump.

So as usual, the Democrats have created a mess and are ideologically opposed to the only painless remedies for the mess they made, so we the people suffer - whether it's poor people of color in the blue cities suffering poverty and sky high crime rates, or the middle class taking it in the shorts in the form of high grocery and utility prices - it's us who pay the price for the disastrous Democratic agenda. And then we keep voting them into office because the media blare the propaganda 24/7 that the Republicans are the root of all evil and the Democrats are the only ones who can fix our problems...and so we keep giving the democrats power and the problems keep getting worse.

And, of course, a guy like Musk who actually does have all the answers is vilified by the left (and the media), and, of course, is ignored - because we don't really need, well, real solutions, do we? We have the democrats' endless virtue signaling to applaud like a bunch of barking seals.

View attachment 74684

Oh, and don't forget to enjoy the decline...

Im all for productivity improvements. Which historically has meant replace human and horse labor with machinery. Musk appears too timid say this out loud.

 

[georgephillip]

You are spot on!

Programmable digital currency (CBDC) is just a modern day version of a ration card as America transitions to owning nothing and eating bugs.

CBDC's threaten society in many ways that wage and price controls don't.

https://www.rdwolff.com/there_are_b...dress_inflation_than_by_hiking_interest_rates

"Another anti-inflation policy, other than raising interest rates, came in August 1971, from Republican President Richard M. Nixon.

"Responding to serious inflation, Nixon declared a 90-day 'wage-price freeze.'

"He and his advisers knew that U.S. wage and price controls had also been deployed during World War II.

"Some had even read John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1952 book, A Theory of Price Control, which showed how well such controls had worked during the war."

 

[worldlymrb]

In other words, you think bringing wages way, way down (hence cheap energy and other commodities due to workers doing more work for less pay) is the answer. But of course that just means lower consumer demand which means it is less profitable to produce even if production is cheaper. A country that chooses to go the route of Nazi Germany (making people work for less) to stimulate production will find itself obliged to stimulate production via war spending, to borrow money (stimulating inflation) to do so, and to go to war to "renegotiate" the loans it is unable to afford.

Cheap energy is just that in whatever form it takes (oil,nuke,wind,solar, fairy dust). Wages are determined by productivity as a ditch digger with a shovel is not worth as much compared to a backhoe operator.

 

[worldlymrb]

CBDC's threaten society in many ways that wage and price controls don't.

https://www.rdwolff.com/there_are_b...dress_inflation_than_by_hiking_interest_rates

"Another anti-inflation policy, other than raising interest rates, came in August 1971, from Republican President Richard M. Nixon.

"Responding to serious inflation, Nixon declared a 90-day 'wage-price freeze.'

"He and his advisers knew that U.S. wage and price controls had also been deployed during World War II.

"Some had even read John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1952 book, A Theory of Price Control, which showed how well such controls had worked during the war."

Wage and price control was and still is the most common attempt by corrupt politicians to control inflation but it always leads to shortages, empty shelves and eventually higher prices. That is why our brilliant trans economist are rushing out their digital ration cards CBDCs.

 

[georgephillip]

So what do you propose to ration? The fastest inflating items? Health care? College? Homes and apartments?

Food and fuel would top my list of things to ration.
Regarding the items you mention, competition from non-profit, public enterprises like Medicare for All, free higher education, and public housing that would limit rent payments to 25% of consumers monthly wages would do more than rationing to offset declining standards of living in the US for 90% of Americans.

 

[worldlymrb]

So what do you propose to ration? The fastest inflating items? Health care? College? Homes and apartments?

While all the above mentioned items have been highest inflating items over the last decades, it is the double digit inflation on food that will usher In the digital ration cards CBDCs. Our Puppet rulers will sell it as “saving the planet” to the mentally ill public because it sounds sexier than wage & price controls.

 

[worldlymrb]

Food and fuel would top my list of things to ration.
Regarding the items you mention, competition from non-profit, public enterprises like Medicare for All, free higher education, and public housing that would limit rent payments to 25% of consumers monthly wages would do more than rationing to offset declining standards of living in the US for 90% of Americans.

Rationing Food and Energy with regulation and executive dictates is very difficult, even for Third Reich type bureaucracies.

However, A digital ration card (CBDCs), avoids that by programming the digital currency in your FED wallet to only approved purchases, (aka 10 gal gas week, 1lb of beef a month, etc…), Without cash, the black market will have to pivet to gold/silver/barter which is more cumbersome. Especially when they get around to banning gold/silver to the peasant class

 

[worldlymrb]

In other words, you think bringing wages way, way down (hence cheap energy and other commodities due to workers doing more work for less pay) is the answer. But of course that just means lower consumer demand which means it is less profitable to produce even if production is cheaper. A country that chooses to go the route of Nazi Germany (making people work for less) to stimulate production will find itself obliged to stimulate production via war spending, to borrow money (stimulating inflation) to do so, and to go to war to "renegotiate" the loans it is unable to afford.

It is the mega rich who OWN every aspect of our crony capitalist/democracy, government systems, politicians and major media outlets. They have a public meeting every year and write policy papers to their puppets in Western governments while preaching a “Post-Human” world. They are called the “You Will Own Nothing” forum. You should check them out someday.

BTW: You can never vote them out.