In other news, at least 63% of people don't have any understanding of what causes inflation and don't have any idea what "free" actually means.
A recent dumb poll conducted by Newsweek found that more than 60% of people are itching for another round of "Stimulus checks" to be handed out to certain people in order to combat inflation because that will solve the problem, right? Just ask Venezuela and a plethora of other countries that have completely ruined their currency by printing more and more of it and giving it away until it is no longer worth the paper it is printed on.
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The Federal government is not in a position to be handing out anything right now seeing as how they have been on an out of control spending spree for many years already. However, some states are stepping up to bribe their own people into voting various legislators back into office and I can all but guarantee that this is going to turn into a political issue rather than one that is actually intended to help anyone.
Colorado and of course California were some of the first states to offer "shut up" money to their residents and honestly, I would have been very surprised if they DIDN'T offer it. They seem to be some of the first states to always look to keep their population placated even when the "cure" is the exact thing that is causing the disease in the first place.
It doesn't matter how much you try to explain to some people that the more currency you introduce into a society for "free" the less it makes any existing currency worth. Some people just can't be reasoned with even if you carefully explain that it is precisely these sorts of stimuli that are causing inflation and perhaps something much worse if we carry on with this path.
It isn't just the usual liberal suspects on this list though: Virginia, Indiana, and even Alaska and Florida are going down this same path and this just leads me to believe that politicians are using dirty tricks to convince low-information voters that their representatives actually give a damn about them.
Make no mistake, when recessions or inflation hit a country it is not the rich that are affected by it. They are smart and know how to diversify their assets so that they will continue to be wealthy. It is the low-income people that are receiving this handout that are going to be negatively affected when the cost of everything rises to accommodate the diminished value of the printed money.
I don't know what needs to be done in order for people to start to understand that there is no such thing as "free" and that any money that the government "gives" to you had to be taken under threat of force from someone else. In many of these situations the very people that are getting the free money had it taken from them in the form of income tax. It's lunacy and I really fear that most of the population of the United States is extremely dumb in an economic sense. Ignorance is bliss though and when these millions of people get their $1000 checks in the mail I can all but assure you that this money will be immediately spent on stupid shit that these people don't actually need. I would recommend buying a top-of-the-range cell phone, because that is likely what these people are going to do anyway.
“I don't know what needs to be done in order for people to start to understand that there is no such thing as "free"”
Over the past 40 years, especially over the past 30, the US has accelerated our reliance on debt, increased domestic deindustrialization by exporting our manufacturing base and supply chains overseas, specifically China, eroding national economic and industrial policy by decentralizing policy to the states, focusing on short-term monetary gains, at the expense of long-term economic benefit to the nation at large.
These events have done a few things:
Globalization since the 1990s, has exported industry and jobs, mostly to China, with no real benefit to the US. This has been deindustrializing the US, reducing our Defense Industrial Base, building China's economy, and their military, fueling and encouraging their global ambitions, which is now overlapping the current global order, which will eventually turn into a World War.
This has decelerated per capita income growth in the US, accelerated debt growth, increased debt to income and debt the asset ratios for households and governments. Burdening more Americans with financial stress. And all the while, core credit interest rates, like the FED funds rate, have continually dropped from 1982 until 2016, making debt cheaper and encouraging Americans to be less financially responsible and exploding the US's Debt to GDP ratio. Which has translated into wealth and income inequality, and eventual political polarization.
We have to reverse this process. We have to reshore and nearshore our supply chains. Build out our defense industrial base, have coherent national industrial and economic policy to accomplish these objectives. Improve our domestic infrastructure, harden our cyber security for critical infrastructure, create redundancies for all of the above.
Create comprehensive policy for our friends and allies (Europe, Japan, Australia, South Korea, India, etc…) for economic, diplomatic and military spheres. We will have to help Mexico with their drug cartel problem and encourage stronger political and economic governance. So as we move business operations out of China, we can nearshore them in Mexico (mostly in the US and Canada). We need to strengthen our ties with nation-states across the Americas, by reinvigorating the Organization of American States. We have to establish a type of Monroe Doctrine with the Americas.
We are going to war. We need to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and establish strong economic, political and military ties with our friends, neighbors and allies. These kinds of policies will increase income in the US, decrease reliance on debt, provide more American jobs, less polarization, more fiscal responsibility, greater work ethic, and a stronger place domestically and in the world. And we have to do this now!
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that was amazing! Did you write that all off the top of your head?
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Thank you…yeah, I guess I like chasing the rats in my skull, lol.
Kidding aside…I spend a great deal of my time on economics, finance and geopolitics. I'm a macro kind of person. Meaning I look at the big picture stuff. The long-term global history stuff. And on a relative basis (compared to China), the US is in decline.
This makes me incredibly sad, and concerned. But what makes me optimistic is we (US) have been through this before, we've lost our way, initiated policy that was detrimental to our health, then bounced back. And since 2008 we have been more focused on our problem…and we just got a huge fire lit under our ass after Trump, the Woke and the pandemic (Populist “Rightist” President, “Leftist” Social Movement and supply chain vulnerabilities). The infighting, the polarization, Trump, the Woke, and the craziness in the US is a symptom…not the problem.
The problem collectively is we’ve (the US) been on top (sole global power) for too long…we adopted an attitude of “we can't lose,” which has led us to not try as hard. We've gotten spoiled…complacent…decadent…and indolent. People got used to getting something for nothing. Racking up debt and obligations…and not worrying about how it is going to be paid back. People have learned to expect “buy now pay later,” forming into entitlement.
A pervasive focus on identity politics is a symptom of this. A core piece of identity politics is that “I am born with certain attributes, which make me special, which entitles me to something.” And if you don't agree to that entitlement, then you're the enemy, and I'm going to take it from you. Hitler used that philosophy against the Jews, and Slavic peoples. And it was an easy sell to the German population, because they were hurting economically.
The British went through this phenomenon at the tail end of the Victorian Age...which was right before the two World Wars that buried the British in debt, loss of an Empire and reserve currency status.
It's going to take a lot of work to change this trajectory. That is why we have to make these changes now for the betterment of all Americans...and our friends and allies. And we don't have that long. We probably won't see war in the 2020s, but it looks much more likely in the 2030s. So our economic, political, and military complex needs to be tip-top by then.
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Not only are the rich smart, but they usually receive the freshly printed money first
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