Doom & Gloom

Dollar Value

Inflation is our enemy. Inflation crushes us all. The stock market goes up by leaps and bounds, but all this apparent gain is an illusion. The value of a pound of steel or wheat or oil has the same value it had yesterday, it's just that the dollars you are using to try and buy that stuff are worth less. The increase in the number of people not working is because companies are trying to survive in trying times. They are doing everything they can to cut costs, and workers are often the biggest expense. If they can't find a way to do more with fewer people, they are going to find themselves going down in flames because other businesses will find a way to cut costs.

Inflation is entirely due to our goddamn government, especially congress. They vote to spend more money than they raise through taxes, so we have more money flowing into the economy, but that just makes every dollar worth a little bit less.

Okay, none of this is new, this has been going on for decades. I don't know when it started, maybe when FDR became President, maybe WW2, maybe when Nixon let gold float. I dunno. Is it going to change? I don't see any signs of improvement, though maybe we are not sliding toward the abyss quite as fast as we were last year.

The part that bugs me the most about inflation is that it is impossible to tell what a good price is. Inflation has become so ingrained that nobody is surprised when things cost more, or at least you shouldn't be. It's still annoying though.

We have numerous propaganda campaigns currently running in this country, shaping the opinions of the great mass of people. Maybe what we need is a propaganda campaign aimed at Congress telling them to quit spending so much money. Since you are only talking about an audience of 500 or so people, it shouldn't be that expensive. Any right thinking billionaire should be able to finance it. 

Most Congress critters are more concerned about getting re-elected than stopping inflation, so a targeted anti-inflation campaign is going to have a tough row to hoe. We also need a campaign to target the voters. That one is going to be considerably more expensive, and is going to be even harder to sell because no one wants their favorite government program cut. In a country of morons, we are all doomed.