Don’t pretend that high prices and American suffering are a ‘bug’ for the establishment — it’s a historic feature

 

Well, the establishment is doing it again. As author Julia Song tweeted: “Sh*t is so fake that the minute an outsider took office we got cheap gas, cheap food, became energy independent, no wars and focused on our country’s own issues. Establishment hacks get back in and we have inflation, medical tyranny, world war 3, need to take a mortgage for gas.”

Report: Inflation Now Higher Than Biden’s Approval Rating https://t.co/vVIgK62ADU via @TheBabylonBee

— Ivan "Lovable, Tolerant, Hate Has No Home " Alaska (@Ivanalaska) January 14, 2022

Psaki Vows To Find, Destroy Underground Lair Where All Corporate Executives Meet To Decide To Raise Prices Simultaneously For No Reason

 

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a press conference today, Press Secretary Jen Psaki vowed to track down and destroy the secret underground lair where all corporate executives meet to decide to raise prices simultaneously, for no reason. 

"It's a conspiracy! A CONSPIRACY, I TELL YOU!" said Psaki as she wildly flipped through her notebook. "The big meat conglomerates! The oil conglomerates! The toothpaste conglomerates! They're all greedy and they're conspiring to raise prices on consumers because they're greedy!"

Wit h that, the entire White House Press Corps broke into wild applause, rushed the podium and carried Psaki around the room on their shoulders. 

The Responsibility is Yours

 

Biden's a victim of Alzheimer's.  What's going on now, for little girls being kidnapped as sex slaves, for people being tortured in Afghanistan, for Americans trapped there with no way out, for inflation destroying the lives of old and poor people, for our energy dependency on the Muslim oil-producing states and Russia, for skyrocketing murders in inner cities devoid of police, for COVID’s (and crime’s, especially sex crime’s) spread through America cities as the illegal aliens pouring in from across the world are joined by Afghans.  THAT'S ON YOU!

Inflation is the objective

 The idea that you can flood the nation with trillions of dollars created by the Federal Reserve without a concomitant increase in the amount of goods and services will not lead to inflation is so bizarre that anyone who holds this view should be banned from giving financial advice.  The only question is “how much.”  

One statistic I have seen is that the Fed is creating new “money” to cover roughly one-third of the federal deficit.  

Imagine if you will that the Federal Reserve gives everybody $1 million dollars.  They can do that with a little help from the Biden Administration.  After all, that’s not such a big stretch from sending everyone a $1400 stimulus check.  Just a few extra zeros.  Suddenly the demand for steaks and lobster would explode, as would the demand for new cars and Rolex watches.  But the supply of steaks and lobsters, cars and Rolexes is not that elastic so you would see some serious price hikes as shoppers bid for the limited supply.   After a while, the supply/demand balance would come back into balance leaving the price of beef at, say $500/pound and the price of a new car at $200,000.  The sad part is that all those millionaires wouldn’t be better off.  There’s a limit to how far a million will go.  So they will be back to  buying Big Macs, now priced at $100.  

Elections Have Consequences – Gas Prices Expected to Top $4/gal Next Year

 When President Obama was in office gas prices soared to more than $5/gal.  When President Trump took office he unleashed the energy sector and we became energy independent for the first time driving gas prices down.  Now reports of the current JoeBama policy impact show gas prices likely to top $4.00/gal next year.

Life in Obama's America: Food prices soar as incomes stand still Remember when the ridiculed Sarah Palin when she said this?

It's Clear That Obama's Price Hiking Policies are Working

Foreign Disasters Distract From Damaged Economy

While the press was focussed like a lazer beam on Mitt Romney's responsiblity for the Middle East blowing up like a Roman Candle, the disasterous Bureau of Labor statistics numbers released on August 14th were completely ignored. But not here.

CPI for all items rises 0.6% in August as gasoline index rises 9.0% On a seasonally adjusted basis, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers increased 0.6 percent in August after being unchanged in July. The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.1 percent in August, the same increase as in July.

Real average hourly earnings falls 0.7 percent in August Real average hourly earnings fell 0.7 percent in August, seasonally adjusted, due to unchanged average hourly earnings combined with a 0.6 percent gain in the CPI-U. Real average weekly earnings fell 0.6 percent over the month.

REAL Tax Reform.

Glenn Reynolds has some interesting ideas for reform in the tax code. He would, for example, “repeal the "Eisenhower tax cut" on the movie industry and restore the excise tax.” He would also levy a “50 percent surtax on any earnings by political appointees in excess of their prior government salaries for the first five years after they leave office.”

Forgive me Glenn, while your ideas are great as far as they go, but that’s still “inside the box” thinking. The problem with our current tax system is that it focuses too much on income and not at all on how people make their money. That has a perverse effect on the economy.  For example, a farmer produces food which is vitally important to people, an auto worker produces cars which are the transportation mode of choice for virtually everybody. We can’t get along without miners and the people who produce and explore for oil and gas. We can say the same for people that work in industries that actually produce things ranging from aircraft to toothpaste. Doctors, while not actually making a product, are critical to curing our ills.

On the other hand, movie actors – if they were to disappear from the planet tomorrow – would have no effect on our well-being. Ditto college administrators, professors who teach any “studies” course, most lawyers, news and editorial writers, TV personalities, ball players, government bureaucrats and elected officials, nutritionists, First Ladies, anyone in the marketing or advertising business, economists and weathermen (whose value is being a good contrarian indicator), and virtually anyone whose product is not tangible.

No matter how much money Warren Buffet has made, or George Soros, or whoever heads Citigroup today, they are basically living off of the efforts of others, skimming an obscene percentage of the goods that people who really make the country work produce.

So how about a tax system that taxes you not on how much you make, but on whether what you make actually benefits the economy in a tangible sense.

So for starters, how about a tax of, say 50% on entertainer income up to $100,000, rising to 90% of income over $1 million? We can decide what the brackets should be, but there should be no question that this would produce a more fair and equitable system; a system where the people who produce the food, the cars, the fuel, the homes are encouraged to produce more for everyone. The people who entertain would come closer to the people instead of living lives of unimaginable luxury.  Those who live like leaches on the productive work of others could still continue to do so, but they would contribute to society by contributing the funds needed to maintain a free, prosperous and fairer culture.

This would also address the issue of inflation which is defined as too much money chasing too few goods. This tax system is aimed straight at this issue. If we reward the goods makers we will get more goods produced. Some of those government bureaucrats may even decide that they want to make something for a living. A win-win as they say. It would also address the issue of the export of high paying manufacturing jobs; by encouraging people to produce more at home and even rewarding those who work in manufacturing with lower tax rates.

I have to say that this proposal is truly brilliant. That’s tax reform for the 21st Century, “change you can believe in,” and “smart economics.”

Yes we can!

Hedge Farm! The Doomsday Food Price Scenario Turning Hedgies into Survivalists

When the "smart money" begins to buy farm land, you know that something's up.  Here's the key: 

This is happening in part because investors see their play as a hedge against hyperinflation. While the rest of the world uses the current calculation of the Consumer Price Index as a proxy for the cost of goods, some farmland investors are using a different equation, one from 1980. These investors assert inflation should be calculated the way it was before the Boskin Commission's 1996 reworking of the CPI formula-in which case, it would be much, much higher.

"The CPI supposedly today is something like 1.5 percent," says the hedge fund manager. "We think the actual rate of inflation is something closer to 6 or 7 percent on an annual basis. It's also not about what it's been over the last 10 years; it's about what it's going to be over the next 10 years."

Yuppies are seeing some of the biggest and fastest price hikes: 

The rising cost of food can be seen even in New York's yuppiest enclaves, where prices are high to begin with. Bloomberg food critic Ryan Sutton has been running a blog called The Price Hike wherein he measures the shifting costs of food at the plate in Manhattan restaurants. Mario Batali's Del Posto is charging 21 percent more per meal since October. Gordon Ramsay at The London? Sixty-nine percent more since last month. Michelin favorite Bouley? Forty percent. The Breslin, at the Ace Hotel? Thirty-three percent. And so on.

The diners at exclusive Manhattan eateries are putting their meals on American Express. In other parts of the world, the reaction is a little more extreme.

Average Gas Price Poised To Hit $4 A Gallon This Week

Obama's wish coming true.

Virginian Pilot: “Go gasoline prices, go!”

Want to read about a paper that’s cheering on the rise in gas prices? In the print copy of the Virginian Pilot the headline reads “Gasoline prices gaining ground.”

“Gasoline prices gaining ground.” “Gaining Ground?” Are the American people cheering on the rise of gas prices as if they were VCU in the Final Four?  How about gas prices have doubled in the last two years?  Headline in the Washington Times blog page: Gasoline up 100% under Obama.

How about gas pieces acting like a heavy tax on the American people? How about gas prices making everything we consume more expensive? How about the Greens, the Left, Democrats and the MSM (but I repeat myself) taking every opportunity to stifle domestic gas, oil, nuclear and coal production? How committed to the Obama Administration and its Luddite energy policies do you have to be to write a headline about skyrocketing gas prices like “Gasoline prices gaining ground.”

The subhead in the print edition reads “Filling up at the pump isn’t fun for the purse, but it could be worse.”

“… it could be worse.” Why yes, gas prices could be $8 a gallon … $25 dollars a gallon … not available at any price. This is stupidity on stilts. No, check that. This is pure ObamaSpeak. It’s right up there with “jobs saved.” It’s right up there with multi-trillion dollar deficits which “could be worse, (what comes after a trillion)?” It’s similar to starting a third war with a country for no vital national interest without consulting with either Congress or the American people; it could be worse!

I don’t know who is responsible for the headlines, the “reporter,” Philip Walzer, or some editor, but the choice of viewpoint in this article is obvious. This is a Virginian Pilot editorial disguised as a news article taking the most positive spin on the fact that gasoline prices have doubled in the last two years under the Obama administration.

In news stories the theme is typically reinforced by the choice of people the reporter chooses to quote. In this case, we have the manager of a cab company telling us that "Until it goes over $4, I'm not going to raise my eyebrows about it." This, despite the fact that his drivers pay “…an extra $12 to $15 daily.” That’s about $5500 annually for you MBAs out there. But there’s a difference between cab drivers and everyone else. Cab drivers can raise their rates to cover their fuel costs. You can’t.

You may note that the on-line version of this story doesn’t have the propaganda headlines. Perhaps someone realized that this attempt to make light of the cost of gas was a little too much and decided to change it. But it shows you the way the MSM manipulates and uses propaganda to frame every situation in such a way that it helps their ideological cause. I have little problem with opinion writers who propagandize, that’s what they’re paid to do. But the news should not be political propaganda; and it’s a leading reason that print media is rapidly being phased out of people’s lives as a source of information. We can get all of our opinion and facts on-line from many different sources. Why pay to have it delivered to your doorstep in such crude form?

Watch for it: the Virginian Pilot will cover the sharp rise in food prices now taking place with the headline “Food prices gaining ground.” “Buying food isn’t fun for the purse, but it could be worse.” Why yes, you could be taking your pay home in a wheelbarrow and spending it before it becomes worthless.

Biggest jump in food costs in more than 36 years!

Remember just a few months ago when Sarah Palin made the point that food prices were rising and the grief she got for saying it? 

Well ....

Wholesale prices rise 1.6 pct. due to biggest jump in food costs in more than 36 years

Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years. Excluding those volatile categories, inflation was tame.

Yeah, except for your food and the way to get to work (if you still have a job) "inflation was tame." You can't parody the AP. They do a better job on themselves.

Keep in mind that Sarah Palin’s comment on food prices was made in the context of her criticism of Federal Reserve policy.

"All this pump priming (by the Fed) will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: Everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher."

That makes Sarah Palin a better forecaster than Ben Bernanke, the people at the Wall Street Journal who doubted her and Ryan Chittum and the rest of the Obama cheerleaders at the Columbia Journalism Review.

Oh how I wish Sarah Palin were president.

Remember when Sarah Palin was roundly criticized for saying that food prices were rising?

From the San Francisco Chronicle online

Food prices rise sharply - and there's more to come

If anything, this article understates the rise in food prices.  I go to the grocery store several times a week and am shocked by the prices of the fresh and packaged food.  Want a goose for Christmas?  Be prepared to shell out $75!