 |
| Biden -- The Guardian |
This writer has been asked many times to make predictions concerning the 2024 national and state elections.
No predictions will be forthcoming.
The United States is unmoored from dependable principles.
That is why politics has become so contentious. In this kind of a political
theatre, only further contention – some of it absurdly silly – is predictable.
Where the two major parties agree on nothing, no one in politics may even agree
to disagree.
Inflation is one instance of an irresolvable contention that
could be resolved by fair-minded men and women.
Inflation is goring all of us. None of us have escaped its
fierce bite. We are reminded every time we go to the store to buy a loaf of
bread that those of us on fixed incomes – nearly all of us, since real wage
increases have become rare -- are shelling out more devalued dollars for the
loaf. We are spending more dollars for products and services because our money
has been seriously devalued by inflation, an insidious hidden tax.
Inflation is produced entirely by government overspending.
It is wholly a political manifestation of a willful misunderstanding of how the
economy works.
The classic definition of inflation is – “too may dollars
chasing too few goods.” There are too many dollars in circulation because the
U.S. government has printed too much devalued fiat currency to pay its bills,
mostly incurred through extravagant spending. Inflation may therefore be
decreased by decreasing spending. Permanent long term cuts in spending are to
inflation what crosses and wooden stakes are to vampires. You cannot reduce
inflation without reducing debt. For those indisposed to increase taxes there
are only three methods of discharging debts: borrowing money, debasing the
currency by printing money, and passing along the debt to future generations.
The national debt, rapidly accumulating for the last 20
years, is $31.4 trillion and rising. Connecticut’s biennial state debt
is about $43.09 billion. These debts can only be reduced, without stoking the fires of inflation, by long term cuts in
spending. So, cut spending. You can cut 10% of anything without causing
disabling effects. Just do it.
Spending cuts are not likely in Connecticut, some would say,
because those who execute political power in a state in which Democrats
outnumber Republicans by a two to one margin are reluctant to offend tax
gobbling organizations, principally state unions, that help Democrats in their
reelection campaigns. Why bite the hand that feeds you?
The assault on reliable energy is another instance in point.
The current presidential administration of Joe Biden has commenced a war
against fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine.
All people in the nation that rely on a politically
unimpeded private marketplace are victims of that war, begun, so we are told,
to save the world from environment collapse. The disastrous measures taken by
Biden to reduce environmental damage will have little effect in saving the nation
from minimal environmental degradation. Nevertheless, Biden has… done what? He
has curtailed the production of fossil fuel supplies, thus driving up the price
of energy that will be paid in inflationary dollars. His chief replacement
mechanism is turbine run wind power, an unreliable energy source the components
of which are made in China, a country unfriendly to the United States but very
friendly – so U.S. House Republicans tell us – with several members of the
Biden family.
In addition to Biden’s war on the internal combustion
engine, the president has also opened a front against gas stoves. This
political sortie hits very close to home, and it will further cause
restaurants, heavily impacted by a government shutdown of businesses during the
late politically caused COVID pandemic, to fire their staffs and shut their
doors. All of this graphically demonstrates that neo-progressives who in recent
years have overrun state and national governments have a primitive and
fantastical understanding of the U.S. economy.
The Biden administration, as well as national and state
Democrats, has been focused on fixing things that are not broken while perversely
refusing to confront what used to be called “the present danger.” All rational
foreign policy is rooted in a realistic appraisal of friends and enemies. Spy
balloons flying over U.S. air space and military installations, China’s
attempts to provoke the Biden administration by reinstalling in Cuba, once an
outpost of the Soviet Union, a refurbished spy station indicate a certain
animosity that should make friendly overtures – not to mention an embarrassing
oriental subservience -- less likely. Unlike most politicians, most Americans
would have no difficulty in tagging China, Russia and Iran as permanent enemies
of the United States.
The Biden administration, chronically unable to rest
comfortably in the sound proposition “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,”
truly believes that diplomacy, rather than a judicious combination force and
diplomacy, will alone be able to win the hearts and change the minds of
committed totalitarian ideologues.
All of them would benefit greatly from a close reading of William Inboden’s masterful retrospective analysis of the Reagan administration in a recently published book titled The Peacemaker.
Comments