This Thanksgiving, may you never forget the words of the United States of America’s Vice-President Kamala Harris, as reported by Fox News:
Prices have gone up and families and individuals are dealing with the realities of the bread costs more, the gas costs more, and have to understand what that means.
Excusing her grammatical errors, she’s probably right. The cost of living has gone up by countless measures. Also headlined by Fox News:
CONSUMER PRICES SURGE BY MOST IN 31 YEARS.
While CNBC says it plainly:
Inflation is not going away any time soon – and Biden will have to wait it out like the rest of us.
On Thursday, when millions of American break (more expensive) bread this year than years prior, all while the media, central bankers, and government remain dumbfounded as to the cause, there are several things you may want to discuss at the dinner table:
You can start by mentioning how the word inflation always meant the increase in the supply of money and credit. Then sometime in the middle of last century it changed to signify the increase in prices as measured through various inflation calculations.
Serve that up by mentioning the stock market and housing prices across the country, ask why they are making all time highs and whether this is reflective of a healthy economy, or if something else is driving higher prices.
Feel free to include that prices change for countless reasons, such as consumer preferences, government decree (e.g., price controls), technological advancement and a whole host of supply/demand reasons. Therefore, it seems somewhat disingenuous for a central bank to claim that it controls inflation when there are innumerable factors beyond its control.
Not normally discussed in mainstream media, the supply and demand of money also plays an important role in price setting. This has been noted by the Austrian’s for well over a hundred years.
If you’re lucky enough to sit down with loved ones, point out that the US debt is only a few billion short of reaching $29 trillion, and that it’s strange the M2 money supply is only $21 trillion, or far less than the debt owed. With no end in sight to their exponential increases, our nation’s leaders should be concerned if interest rates were to increase ever again.
With families feeling the pinch of rising prices, America’s Vice-President talks about multi-trillion government plans to help society, claiming:
Build Back Better is not going to cost anything.
Remind them that everything has a cost, a cause and effect, and that it’s the expansion of the money supply that causes many of society’s problems. Therefore it’s unlikely that further expansion will be the solution.
This isn’t a democrat or republican debate. It’s an economics debate. On one side there is a school of thought which bases its ideas on axioms and the importance of economics to describe a real-world economy, which also includes seeking to understand the history and importance of money and its purchasing power. On the other side, are those who don’t bother with such things.
As to what the price of a turkey will be next Thanksgiving, the year after, and in the long run, no one can accurately predict. But without a bout of turkey deflation, it’s safe to say prices will continue to trend upwards, as intended by the world’s leading economists and our central planners. At least on Thanksgiving Day, you can rest assured that they’re not bothered by any of this in the slightest.
