So I'll put you in the same category with Trump. Instead of doing away with inflation altogether, we'll tolerate a 'normal' amount just to keep Big Government intact.[/url]
Oh, and we could bring prices back to pre-Biden simply by removing the excess money the Fed printed up over the last five years, four under Biden and one under Trump.
Inflation is such a simple matter. If you don't want inflation, don't expand the money supply. This is 100% in the hands of government. But the problem is that government wants inflation. They want the money devalued because it reduces their overall debt. It steals value away from the people and hands that value back to the government. Inflation is one of the greatest evils ever perpetrated upon a free people - 100% government-driven.
I get the appeal of the “inflation is simple” narrative. It’s clean, it’s satisfying, it fits on a bumper sticker. But the real world isn’t built like that, and pretending it is doesn’t get us any closer to the truth—or to solutions.
First: zero inflation isn’t some promised land. It means zero nominal wage growth, zero flexibility in credit markets, and a much higher chance of slipping into deflation, which is far worse for working people than a steady 2% glide. The idea that a modern economy can run with no inflation and no shock absorbers sounds great until you try to live inside it.
Second: the notion that we could “just remove the excess money” and magically reset prices to 2019 ignores how prices actually form. The money supply isn’t a bathtub you drain. Since 2020 we’ve dealt with broken supply chains, a global pandemic, a commodity shock from Russia’s war, OPEC games, demographic shifts, corporate pricing power, and a surge in demand after lockdowns. You can’t unwind all of that by flipping a switch at the Fed. What you can unwind is the job market—fast—if you try.
Third: inflation is not “100% government-driven.” No economist, left, right, or libertarian, makes that claim. It takes willful blindness to look at a global pandemic, multiple supply shocks, energy disruptions, and record-high corporate margins and still point to Washington as the sole culprit. Monetary policy mattered, yes—but it was one instrument in a very loud orchestra.
Fourth: the idea that government wants inflation because it supposedly benefits them doesn’t survive basic political gravity. No administration wants to go into an election cycle carrying 8% inflation on its back. If this was an intentional play, they executed it with the precision of a drunk climbing a ladder.
The real issue isn’t the existence of inflation—it’s the volatility, the whiplash, the sense that families are once again stuck riding an economic beast they didn’t choose. Stable, predictable inflation is workable. Chaos is not. That’s the point of the piece: not “let’s tolerate inflation,” but why do we keep accepting a system that exposes ordinary people to these violent swings?
That’s the adult conversation. Everything else is economic cosplay.
Topic: THE GREAT AMERICAN PRICE TRAP: Riding the Inflation Beast From DC to the Last Mortgage Denied at Daw (Read 270 times)
