It's not about the world, it's about us.
When Dementia signed the extra unemployment bill as industry started looking for help, it paid people more to stay home than work. People became conditioned to not working and many never returned after the handouts stopped a year from last September.
Business competing with government for workers is a terrible situation Dementia put us in. Industry had to offer much higher wages to attract what workers were left. All business costs get transferred to we the consumers. But wait! Can these additional labor costs be responsible for the highest inflation in 40 years? Not really. But given Dementia's anti-energy stance, businesses also have to suffer increased utility costs. Industries that have to heat large buildings or use a lot of electricity to manufacture their products also seen costs double there as well. That's not so bad, is it? But wait! What about increased transportation costs? Diesel fuel is still the highest price ever in the US and those trucks get around 6mph to the gallon. They pass on their losses to their customers.
Inflation is the definition of products costing more than they used to. So how are Dementia's polices responsible?
* Higher labor costs which he initiated.
* Higher utility costs which was his fault.
* Higher utility costs which always follows the price of other fuels.
Add them all together, it's no wonder we had 8% inflation. It's a little lower now because the price of gasoline dropped with the looming recession on it's way, but still the highest in 40 years.
If all the business costs are passed on to the customer, how is it that every non-supervisory and production worker has seen their wages increase by 1.6% more than inflation the last five months. And low-skilled workers have seen their wages increase by almost twice that of inflation since the beginning of the pandemic.
And these people that became "conditioned to not working", if the extra unemployment dried up over a year ago how are they making it? Could it be that they found a way to make more money, or maybe make less but spend less money, than when they worked a so-called "job"? Why would you begrudge them that? Because you want cheaper Fruit Loops?
And this increased utility cost claim, it is bullshit. Natural gas is up in price, because we EXPORT so much of it. Coal prices are down from a spike in March, and they will decline further. But the biggest thing, utilities capital spending has been increasing for a decade, and last year, under Biden, it broke all records. Smart utility plays are the place to be in the market. And so much for the claim that Biden is slowing investment, in either utilities are production. Domestic oil production will break records this year, or at least by the end of next year. I mean the claims you on the right make just don't pan out.
Look, this inflation thing was easily predictable. First, under Trump, with an economy contracting due to Covid, personal incomes went UP due to government payments. Hell, Trump was doing everything short of dropping dollars from helicopters. Personal savings expanded dramatically. I mean, du huh. And, with workers out of work, and drawing those big checks, the supply chain was fubared. It is only beginning to recover.
The war in Ukraine didn't help. Few people realize how important Ukraine was to the grain markets, and Russia to the fertilizer market. And the US, trying to be a good ally, has exported tons of natural gas and finished oil products to her allies. But we all are paying the price. And it is absolutely delusional to think that Trump would have prevented Putin from going senile.
The reality is the US is sitting in the catbird seat. "America first", wasn't that Trump's mantra? To bad he had no clue how to make that happen. We tell the rest of the world to go to hell, we thrive. We can be energy independent, and we have a thriving labor force, in no small part thanks to immigration, both legal and illegal.
But enough, let me lay the future out for you. The Fed will raise the discount rate again, and that will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Recession is on the horizon, and maybe it is planned, because I sure don't see how anyone with two brain cells can't see that we don't need another rate hike. Millions will be laid off. Housing prices will plummet. But don't worry about your 401K, the market will enter a new bull market. Inflation will calm down, but the Phillip's curve is real, there will be a tradeoff.
In that scenario, Biden loses to anyone other than Trump, and that is your wake-up call. Republicans can take the House, which they already have, barely, and they can take the Senate. They can win the executive and get the coup de tat, have complete control, if they just lock up that dumbass Trump. If they don't, then welcome to insignificance, the scrap heap of history, and take your place besides the Know Nothing party.
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