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| Dante's nine circles of Hell |
Problem, Inflation and recession: The classic definition of inflation, suppressed these many months throughout the administration of President Joe Biden and his reality deniers in Washington D.C., is – “too many dollars chasing too few goods.”
It does not take a genius, or a Dr. Fauci, to discover why
there are, in our post-COVID era, too few goods and services.
Chief Executives across the nation, with notable exceptions
such as South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, shut down nearly the entire economy
in response to COVID, which kept mutating, each successive manifestation less
dangerous than its predecessor, though one would never guess this to be the
case while Fauci was directing from behind an OZ curtain the whole U.S.
economy. Yes, he was – don’t let the bugger say “Nay.”
Fewer open businesses led to fewer jobs, fewer paychecks,
fewer tax receipts, larger deficits, less scholarly children, and more breast
beating from the rooftops by savior politicians who “cared” and too frequently
demonstrated to a stricken population that they were “there to help.” U.S.
Senator Dick Blumenthal, up for re-election this year, is one of these
screaming harridans, and there are some signs that some in Connecticut are
contemplating giving him the boot.
So then, too few goods and services are one component of
inflation.
The shutdown of businesses and services led to heavy
borrowing on the part of the federal government and the printing of too many
dollars – the second component of inflation -- which led, of course, to yet
another devaluation of the currency.
In Imperial Rome, inflation was visible.
Roman spendthrifts used to clip the coins and the clipping was noticed, with
many a frown and hot imprecation, by members of the Roman community, farmers,
merchants, and the like.
Visible devaluation of the currency in the postmodern period
disappeared during the presidential administration of Richard Nixon, who took
the country off the gold standard, replacing it with no standard of visible
measurement at all but the “good faith and trust” of people in government who,
in Connecticut and elsewhere in the nation, have now brought us two years and
more of inflation. The problem of inflation – a hideous, hidden tax – now has
alarmingly become invisible to all but economic “experts,” a massive portion of
which is umbilically attached to the great fructifying DC spending womb.
The experts in Washington DC have become practiced in hiding
the inflation body under the bed or blanketing it with downy rhetoric . But the
ever rising price of goods and services has now alarmed the general population
– farmers, merchants, truck drivers, soccer moms and the like – and the corpse
has begun to stink up the house, but not, apparently, the houses of
Connecticut’s walleyed reporters and commentators.
So then, too many dollars and too much spending of the many
dollars causes inflation.
Quick Fix: Print less money, reduce unnecessary
regulation, tax fewer people, and leave dollars in the hands of a general
population that will “invest” its own money more prudently than politicians in
Washington D.C. or Connecticut’s spendthrift progressives in the General
Assembly.
Also, return post haste to a gold standard.
Problem, public trust: Public trust in bankers,
used car dealers, pollsters, incumbent politicians, and other unsavory pirates,
is lower than Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell.
Literary scholars, still in good odor with the general
public, will notice that Dante’s nine rings of Hell are arrangedfrom the
tolerable to the insufferable as follows, from bad to worse: Limbo, Lust,
Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery, at the center
of which we meet Satan presiding over a subsection of the lowest rung of Hell
reserved for political and national traitors. Dante was a fierce Florentine
republican. The lusty Hunter Biden, the wayward son of the President, may
survive the second ring of Hell, lust, but gluttony, fraud and treachery are
more problematic. And the comedians are beginning to whisper: “Like son, like
father?”
Quick Fix: There is no solution for those who betray
the public trust, but these ultimately will, God being just, reap their final
rewards. Hell is much hotter than a hot July day in Connecticut without air
conditioning and much colder than a wintery post-Christmas Day in New England
without sufficient pipes to carry into frozen homes life-saving warmth
generated by relatively clean natural gas or nuclear power. Windmills can’t do
the job.
Problem, Greed And Public Employee Unions: Connecticut’s
pension fund for public employee unions has been long emptied by fraudulent and
treacherous incumbent politicians. For the first two or three decades of the
“dedicated” public employee pension fund “lockbox”, no deposits were
made. Thereafter the “lockbox” was regularly raided by thirsty
politicians, many of them still in office, who fully expect that a $111.2
billion unfunded pension liability, the
nation’s worst, will be paid, down the line, by the miseducated
children and grandchildren of the current crop of miseducated children. No one
is storming the barricades yelling “Stop!”
Quick Fix: Some have proposed a two part solution to
ever increasing state debt. First, end salary and budget contractual
negotiations between state employee union honchoes and their employers, the
state of Connecticut. Set salary and pension parameters unilaterally by a two
thirds quorum vote in the General Assembly. Given the symbiotic relationship
between state employee unions and the dominant three decades old Democrat
legislative hegemony, one cannot expect the Governor’s office, the chief union
contract negotiator with union heads, to be overly watchful of the debt the
state of Connecticut has regularly passed on to yet unborn taxpayers, many of
whom will flee Connecticut rather than submit to payments deeded to them by
past Governors and General Assembly men and women. Second: Regularize the
retirement age of state workers and advance it two years.
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