Four years of Biden felt like an eternity. From the brainless lockdowns (started by Trump but bolstered by Biden), to the rapid inflation that followed the enormous injection of cash into our system (again started by Trump and bolstered by Biden), and the crushing regulations that threatened to kill free speech and industry (that was all on Biden), things have not felt great socially or economically in the United States. Now, two stories out of The Wall Street Journal highlight the impending doom ordinary citizens feel.
Inflation has been ticking up over the last several months and has now finally crossed the 4% line. Granted, this isn’t true inflation as it should be defined, but prices are rising nevertheless. According to the report, consumer prices were up 4.2% in May from a year earlier, accelerating from 3.8% the previous month. Remember that inflation is cumulative. Prices don’t reset every year. This year’s 4.2% increase is layered on top of all the inflation that came before it. Has your income increased enough over the last several years to keep pace? I doubt it.
Consumer prices were up 4.2% in May from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday, accelerating from 3.8% the previous month.
That was the highest year-over-year print since April 2023 and a sign that high energy costs stemming from the conflict with Iran are continuing to push up price pressures.
The reading was in line with what economists polled by The Wall Street Journal expected.
Yet the rate of increase cooled slightly compared with April, a sign that the sharp rise in energy prices may have peaked and be softening.
Prices excluding food and energy categories—the so-called core measure economists watch in an effort to better capture inflation’s underlying trend—rose 2.9% on the year. That was in line with forecasts, and was slightly hotter than 2.8% the previous month.
The Wall Street Journal
The other story, which I blogged about just yesterday, is about Social Security running out of dough a year earlier than previously projected. I sarcastically said that we need to implement the Logan’s Run Protocol. That protocol, as I defined it, works like Carousel in the movie. All of us above a certain age would have to report to the government so we can be culled to ease the economic burden on the next generation.
How much of this baloney do we have to deal with? Have we learned nothing from the economic debacles of the past?
The Iran conflict is a prime example. This is Trump’s COVID-19 2.0. During COVID, the non-pandemic that it was, Trump was convinced by his inner circle that we needed to “lock down for two weeks to slow the spread,” or stop the spread, or whatever. It was nonsense. It was obvious nonsense. Anyone who thought about it for any length of time and wasn’t burdened by outright fear could see that shutting down the United States of America would have gigantic ripple effects for years to come. We’re still dealing with them.
Trump is having the same problem with Iran. He’s listened to the war mongers in his administration and was convinced to launch this war, probably because he believed the bullshit that he’ll be remembered in the history books as a great president for taking down the Iranian regime that has been a thorn in our side for 47 years (as they love to repeat because Trump is the 47th president). Anyone who thought about this for any length of time could see that this attack would not succeed without wiping out all of Iran’s hardliners and military leadership. The country would have to be decimated and conquered. Throughout history, a “light” war has rarely had positive outcomes. They often turn into years-long quagmires.
Energy prices, as a result, have ballooned. When energy prices go up, the price of everything goes up. Furthermore, there isn’t anything oil doesn’t touch in our world. From the keyboard I’m typing on to the gas in my car, petroleum runs and rules our lives. If we’re paying $1.00 more per gallon, that means that for every tankful, a person is spending an extra $20 to $30 per week, depending on the size of the vehicle and its fuel tank. That’s $80 to $120 per month and $960 to $1,440 per year.
It’s no longer chicken feed (which I’m sure has also skyrocketed). That’s a massive tax on every economic class except the extreme high-income earners and the independently wealthy. If they budget at all, how do you budget for that? When a great many people don’t even have $1,000 in emergency savings, where do we think they’re going to get the extra cash for daily staples?
Now extrapolate that to business. Everything you buy requires transportation from one point to another. We don’t yet have Star Trek replicators in our homes that can produce food and other goods on demand from random atoms or waste products. This is why everything feels so stuck in the mud.
You’re not earning more, but the things you need to live every day cost more. And it’s snowballing.
I’m living in Georgia, where the overall tax burden is pretty low and the government runs budget surpluses. Heck, I’ve even received actual tax rebates in the six years I’ve lived here (that never happened in Illinois, ever). But if I were still living in Illinois, the problem would be compounded. They’re so deep in debt and unfunded pension liabilities that they may need to start taxing the air people breathe and doubling taxes on tourists.
This post is nothing more than a long rant. I know that. I don’t think it would be any better if we had elected Kamala Harris. In fact, it would probably be worse because her administration would have been a continuation of the Obama-Biden economic malaise. They love stagnation in place of a dynamic economy that has up-and-down cycles.
So what’s the solution? The solution is always the same, but it’s rarely, if ever, practiced. Reduce the amount of government intervention in our lives. Stop going to war for nothing and with no clear objective. Get government out of the way and unleash the power of human entrepreneurship. Stop printing money. Privatize Social Security and end the large entitlement programs.
I’ll never live to see any of it. I just hope I can get to the point where I don’t know what’s going on anymore so I don’t have to witness our demise. The collapse of a great nation is slow until it’s not. Then it’s just done.
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