Six months ago: Inflation isn't happening, you dummies.
Three months ago: Temporary inflation is happening, but wages are higher!
One month ago: Okay, it's happening but it's not Biden's fault!
Now:
Yes, that's a real tweet from the clown squad at MSNBC (that was then deleted). You've got to hand it to them: they are really great at making us all laugh. They're going to put The Babylon Bee outta business at this rate!
It has a familiar ring to it...
Anyway, here's what opinion columnist James Surowiecki has to say:
The message Americans have been getting about inflation from in recent months can be summed up in four words: Be afraid. Very afraid.
Something about losing all the money one has worked so hard for over the course of a lifetime can do that.
I'm sure this totally-unbiased person will tell us why we should actually be happy our dollar is worth less.
The increase in food and gas prices that we've seen over the past eight months is real and meaningful. Inflation hawks have been telling scary stories about impending inflation ever since the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to near-zero during the financial crisis of 2008-09. For once, they're not making things up. Inflation is now running at a little more than 5 percent, driven largely by energy prices and food prices (which in September were up roughly 4.6 percent year-over-year). And the price of some food items, most notably beef, have risen even more sharply than that.
So far, no good news, but I'm sure he's getting to it.
Historically, recessions have left Americans poorer, not better off. But the Covid recession was different. As people shifting their habits drastically in response to the pandemic, they spent much less and saved more. Even though millions of Americans lost their jobs, enhanced unemployment benefits and stimulus payments left many of them better off, not worse. And the stock market, after initially falling, boomed.
Ah, yes. I too am familiar with the enduring economic principle where a flood of government money created a fiscally healthy and thriving civilization. Just go explore the ruins of those societies throughout history!
The result of all this was that Americans ended 2020 $13.5 trillion richer than they were at the beginning of the year. Most of that wealth increase went, of course, to the already wealthy. But lower-income households benefited, too.
Translation: Your money is worth a lot less than it was two years ago, but you get to brag about making more, just like Zimbabweans got to brag about being trillionaires!
And sure, all the rich got richer while the poor and middle class got hurt, but let's not focus on that too much because millionaires like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have our backs!
The JP MorganChase Institute found, for instance, that the bottom 25 percent of income earners had 50 percent more in their checking accounts in October 2020 than they did a year earlier. So lots of Americans came into 2021 with money in their pockets.
It'll be fun to see JP MorganChase be surprised when that stimmy money is all gone. Hope you all enjoyed that little bit of cash while you had it!
And since then, we've seen the sharpest recovery from a recession since World War II, one that's driven the unemployment rate down to 4.6 percent, and wages up almost 5 percent year-over-year.
Let's remember something important about said recession.
What all this means is that American consumers are, relatively speaking, flush, and it's that strong demand for goods and services that is sending prices higher. But it's taking manufacturers and food producers time to increase supply after cutting back production during the pandemic.
Once again, "flush with cash" only means something if cash is indeed worth something and if that higher cash flow is permenant.
When you have high demand, and relatively low supply, prices go up.
Amazing. They snuck an actual economics fact in there.
The inflation we're seeing is not, then, some mysterious affliction that's descended on the economy. It's the predictable product of the economy's rapid recovery, and its costs have been offset, to a large degree, by robust wage growth and government policies.
Except the economy isn't in a recovery. It's in an artificial rebound caused by politicians locking everything down willy nilly. For a short period of time in this weird gap phase we're in, the average person will have more cash.
As inflation increases due to government spending and supply-chain issues, that cash will be worth less and less. Businesses, already struggling to find workers amid vax mandates and welfare programs, will struggle further and fail. There will be less and less available, but more and more demand, until something in the system breaks.
So instead of telling people to be afraid, maybe tell them to be concerned. Sort of concerned.
Don't panic, little sheeple. Just follow the program.
The media knows what's best for you!
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