203 Comments

Taxes and inflation are government gouging.

Expand full comment

Ssshhhh. Don't tell anyone. lol

Expand full comment

Bullshit. Taxes are the nprice you pay for living in a civilization . Inflation is mostly corporate driven.

Expand full comment

Corporations have nothing to do with inflation. This is econ 101. Milton Friedman famously said: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” End of story. Calling it a function of greed is a smoke screen by the politicians that caused it.

Expand full comment

Friedman was a fraud and a fool, and so are you. Look at reality, not academic theory or self driven fraud. In the US right now big corporations (which should be broken into tiny pieces) are buying back stock and raising prices, rather than serving their customers. Your Econ professor should be fired.

Expand full comment
Aug 22·edited Aug 22

Wow. You really have drank the propaganda Kool-Aid. I suggest you read this book to understand how the government drives inflation thru expanding the money supply (it's about 400 pages but once you read it you will understand what the government and bank cartel has done to the American citizen):

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/vvrxthhs9bb0g6wlhw0fp/The-Creature-From-Jekyll-Island.pdf?rlkey=3gj9r95hqmqs1joacextocy9i&st=iwoa5sru&dl=0

Once the US government removed the gold standard in 1971 the value of the dollar has crashed (this was not done by corporations). Gold was $35 an ounce in 1971 it is now about $2,500 an ounce--this is due to expansion of the money supply that has devalued the dollar. It now takes more dollars to by an ounce of gold by a factor of 71X. The government prints currency (expands the money supply) to cover its excess spending which devalues the US dollar since there is now nothing behind our fiat currency. This is a tax on all American's (especially the poor) since it steals their purchasing power.

View the governments data here to see how the money supply has exploded since 1971: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

Expand full comment

Did you see RFK J.'s bitcoin speech at the Bitcoin 2024 conference on Youtube? Worth the time. The Jekll Island grifters have to be turning in their graves.

Expand full comment

Unfortunately, most Democrats today are economically illiterate.

Expand full comment

Perhaps true of rank-and-file elected Ds, and the larger share of their supporters, but the leadership and their corporate paymasters know plenty well that price controls will be an excellent tool to drive startups and other smaller competition from the marketplace.

Expand full comment

There never was a fuel shortage in the OPEC embargo years. There was a reduction in supply, but that is not the same as a shortage.

The problem was the price controls.

If the gas prices had been allowed to rise naturally, people would have been incentivized to use as little gas as possible to save their hard earned cash. Carpool, combine trips, walk or bicycle, get a smaller car if possible. Gas stations would not have run out, as the higher prices would keep the demand in line with the supply (the prices would rise until the supply and demand curves intersected).

As it was, the price controls prevented gas prices from rising, which meant the demand remained well in excess of the supply, so gas stations ran out of gas regularly.

No one went to the gas station and only bought the smallest amount they thought they could get away with for the next week or so. That would be foolish when you don't know if the station will have any gas to sell you at the end of that week! The most logical strategy when you have an unreliable supply of something is to get as much of it as you can when you can. And that was what people did!

As a consequence, there was rationing. That didn't fix the problem, though. If the gas station would only let you have ten gallons, you would take all ten, even if you could get away with less. After all, you never know when you might get a chance to buy more. And after waiting all day in line, if the station did not go dry before you got your turn, you might go to another station and buy another ten there, if you happened to see one that had gas. The price controls caused shortages, and shortages cause hoarding behavior, which cause more shortages.

There is no such thing as price gouging. If a price is too high for the level of demand, no one will buy the thing. No sale, no gouging. If someone buys a thing at a given price, that means the thing was worth it to him more than the money. The item was worth that price. No gouging.

Expand full comment

In other words, the solution to high prices is high prices.

Expand full comment

No... you're not even close with that one.

Expand full comment

So you're saying the "failure" of price controls is not a failure, but the actual objective. I think you're getting it.

Expand full comment

That’s right. Those are the globalists who are beholden to no party or nation. The true power behind the scenes, for centuries.

Expand full comment

Price controls are not the conversation needed. We must address the expanding corporatism of government. That is driving the expanding money supply, allowing corporate greed, and monopoly economic practices.

Expand full comment

excellent point. Mass manipulation = $$$

Expand full comment

probably most of what is in govt no matter what colour

Expand full comment

You misspelled everyone. And what do you expect when there is ZERO economics education in grade school or even college. Unless you are in the school of business (or maybe the school of hard knocks) you likely get no education in economics.

Expand full comment
Aug 20·edited Aug 20

oh, They made me take macroeconomics in college.

the things I learned about private banks generating money out of thin air using loans they can't even back made me extremely angry and disgusted.

the Powers That Be are lucky I'm not the violent type, because I really thought the end of Fight Club was a beautiful scene.

Expand full comment

... or Law.

Expand full comment

Why limit their illiteracy to just economics, you are too kind.

Expand full comment

Oh, I didn't limit it whatsoever. :)

Expand full comment

there are no sides and all politicians are against the populace. the european equivalent of trump is viktor orban in hungary. he is using the price gouging narrative since years... i would like to see an honest reporter and ask him how he feels that his enemy the "left woke liberals" are using the same narrative as him.

Expand full comment
Aug 19·edited Aug 19

Yes, there are sides (obviously). I'm concerned about America, and in America, the Republicans currently are far closer to the mark, economically, than the Neo-Marxist Democrats.

Expand full comment

I applaud your optimism, but I am not sure I share it. While a few republican "rogues" might be closer to the mark, the leaders of the GOP are not so far from the other party when it comes to actions. They're rhetoric is sometimes different, but when it comes to the legislative record, and it's not so different: the GOP whines a lot but then votes for the massive spending increases that are driving the value of the dollar into the ground. It may be the D-party taking all the credit, but they're getting help from the GOP (sadly).

Expand full comment

Ha! ANd those who follow the elephant into bankruptcy and crime are not?

Expand full comment
founding

The lack of economic knowledge in America is staggering .

Expand full comment

Me thinks: not taught in K thru 12 schools any more.

Expand full comment

Reposting what I wrote on John Carter's Substack this morning:

In middle school my kid had a wonderful teacher who had them do a "live like a grownup" project that was probably the most valuable experience he ever had, educationally. They had to "find a job" using the help-wanted ads; "rent an apt." using the classified ads too; and budget with their "salaries." My kid was shocked at what a weekly food bill would be as we went through the aisles and he added up the costs for what he'd buy if he was a single guy on his own. Most of his classmates "ran out of money" before the end of each month but the lessons of that project really did set him up for life. That was 20 years ago.

I still wonder why a class like that is not part of every kid's education everywhere.

Expand full comment

"I still wonder why a class like that is not part of every kid's education everywhere."

What? You want kids thinking they can make it on their own without government assistance? You right wing lunatic, you!

Expand full comment

I wish right wing lunatics had not abandoned the public schools to become what they are now. No matter where or how you educate your own children, other people's children may show up and bite you.

Expand full comment

all the agencies captured now. Teachers Unions? God help us! Remember Pres Reagan wanted to get rid of the Dept of Education = couldn't do it. Trump wants to too. Any bets?

Expand full comment

Martyr Made does an excellent examination in his series on Blacks and Jews on what happened to the NYC public schools starting in the '70s.

Paywalled, but in my view he is one of the handful of Substackers truly worth paying for. As with our host here, he's an honest broker and a wonderful writer.

Expand full comment

....parents have commoditized their children - government screwl is tantamound to child abuse. Ben Franklin said, "Never ruin an appology with an excuse." Which is all we've heard - above the siphoning-sucking-sound of glorified welfare-dollars feeding more bureaucrats... administrative statist excuses but never any justice.

Expand full comment

How about Junior Achievement. It was sponsored in schools in the 1960s with teacher overseeing real projects. Heck, Home Economics classes? I personally learned a lot with my paper route in junior high. had to collect money on weekends, deal with deadbeats, go recruit new subscribers.

Expand full comment

Collections alone would bury today's influencer.

Expand full comment

.... don't blame the clowns when we bought the ticket to the circus.

Expand full comment

My kids never had a class like this. Their consumer ed class was a complete joke. It would have helped had they had an experience like your son’s. I tried to supplement them at home but by the time they got home from a long wasted day at school they were brain dead and uncooperative. I wish I could turn back the clock and I’d home school my kids from the start. All our lives would be so much better today had I done that.

Expand full comment

It was some experience. The kids had to "furnish" their apts. too. So of course most of them went crazy with the possessions of their dreams and then had no money before the end of the month.

I can still remember the look on my kid's face as he tried to stick to his grocery budget after the necessities had been paid for. The bonus of course was the respect he gained for his mother.

Expand full comment

Nor apparently at the dinner table.

Expand full comment

On the one hand, I agree.

On the other hand, I assure you that at most dinner tables, one is dealing with "kids," particularly if they are on their own and out of the house, who have been spoon-fed the economically illiterate version of, well, everything! To be honest, until I ran my own business--which was, at the time, a real estate investment company--I had no idea, NONE, of most basic economic concepts. Everyday life has been decoupled from economics, since it allows politicians, most of them dumb as a box of rocks, to pander to general economic (and numerical) illiteracy of the public.

Expand full comment

I am trying to teach my kids about that with Tuttle twins books and materials by Connor Boyack (they cover from preeschool to university). So far, my prek son and my second grader daughter know about inflation, golden rule, market competition, central plannimg… I highly recommend it.

Expand full comment

Great work, great books, you are an excellent parent!

Expand full comment

.... the less people know the better they obey.

Expand full comment

I agree. If a company is price gouging then customers will simply shop around and buy somewhere else, unless the company is a monopoly, like Google, Microsoft, etc. Rather than focusing on the bogy man of price gouging, I think it would be more worthwhile to focus on the out of control money printing, sending billions of $ to the Ukraine and Israel, and breaking up monopolies.

Expand full comment

Government here just needs a scapegoat. Those big bad corporations are a good target! Plus gives more power and control to them

Expand full comment

exxactly

did we vote for that? no we did not vote for our government to go on a spending spree.

Expand full comment

Not to mention making energy more expensive which is a major factor in food production

Expand full comment

Yep. If the government wants to do something about price gouging, the place to start is with patent law which affords a company a government enforced monopoly. That system is rife with abuse.

Expand full comment

"But when brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the

real needs which gave rise to socialism and

trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild

or corporative system in which divergent interests

are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the

State."

If you'e honest, the system of large corporations using the buying of legislators in the USA to further their ends reflects the perfection of the Fascist system in the USA, or a version of it. Mussolini thought the state would control corporations that would control people; he failed to see that corporations would control politicians that would weight things for the corporations.

We need to break up crony capitalism.

Expand full comment

I'm glad of this thorough explanation but the part of Kamala's speech I loved the very best was her reading from the teleprompter "price gauging."

Expand full comment

Price gauging is usually followed by giggling

Expand full comment

"...is usually followed by giggling"

Well, that doesn't exactly narrow things down there, Rob.

Expand full comment

Kamala would giggle even if she was announcing nuclear war with Russia.

Expand full comment

Well. I don't giggle as I decide which item is the better value. It's more often a sad surrender...

Expand full comment

But not "gagging" (IYKYK)

Expand full comment

I heard about that. Did this person ever attend ANY school?

Expand full comment

"Did this person ever attend ANY school?"

You appear to hold the dubious position that going to school would somehow rectify this ignorance.

Expand full comment

LOL. Well, I would've thought that she'd at least had been taught to read!

Expand full comment

I better not get into that. I'm sure there have been many fine alumnae...

Expand full comment

she was "hollowed" out by the Poetess Emerita of America... and drunk on power, Smirnoffs, etc. no wonder she and Pelosi are besties

Expand full comment

You know how sometimes people's set-piece anecdotes tell far, far more than they ever intended to reveal?

Kamala's little story about how she fell out of the stroller at a protest march and when her mom finally found her again, she purportedly asked "What do you want, baby? What do you need?" and Kamala purportedly lisped "fweedom?"

Now, Kamala has never had her own toddler so it's not surprising she hasn't got the natural understanding of how you react when you discover your kid is missing. And I of course greatly doubt that her mother said those two absurd sentences either.

But Kamala sure didn't present a picture of a loving mother both distraught and relieved when she finally relocated her missing baby girl in a sea of legs.

The scientist mother, who'd shamed the family by marrying a Jamaican man no matter how equally of intellectual status he was; the half-black little girl looking exactly like her father who always knew she wasn't completely acceptable during those holidays with baba and nani (or whatever the South Indian terms are); her sister who got pregnant in HS which is a shocking disgrace for the Indian side and probably not so favored in the educated class of her Jamaican side.

Kamala did indeed decide she was going to favor her black heritage, attending Howard, faking the speech cadences entirely absent from either of her parents; she is I think someone who belongs to nowhere and no people, inside, and has therefore crafted for herself an entirely fictitious persona.

That's far less laughable than it is a terrible indictment of her upbringing and perhaps especially of her mother, who sure doesn't sound, even despite the ridiculousness of that little tall tale, a warm and nurturing woman.

Expand full comment

I don’t believe that the price control platform is based on ignorance. I believe it is based on malice and forethought.

Expand full comment

Ha! You'd be surprised how many young people in Washington actually believe this crap.

Expand full comment

Meh - who can tell the difference? *shrug*

Expand full comment

Yes, if we remember that depopulation is the humming subtext of everything these days.

Expand full comment

In California there is the San Joaquin Valley. It has one of only five Mediterranean climates on Earth. It has the best soil and an in place agriculture infrastructure. It has been a powerhouse of food production. What it doesn't have is support of the state government. The state is doing everything it can to reduce water supply to the farmers. I believe this is in coordination with the 30x30 Plan.

Expand full comment

One of my offspring is there now --- for work. Plans to leave in abt 6 months.

High taxes of all sorts

Regulations to the moon

Prob highest minimum wage in country-

causing businesses to get rid of employees, even close after decades

Mishandling of homeless issue

$$$$$ being handed out to illegals

Price of real estate exploding

I could go on and on

Just insane!

I think they say As goes California, so goes the nation. We are in big trouble.

Expand full comment

Very sad what has happened to --- imo what used to be the most beautiful state in the union.

Vacationed there only once and didn't want to leave. Seriously! If my spouse wasn't against it, I would probably be there now. I/we dodged a bullet!

I pay attention to what Gruesome Newsome has done, is doing. If he took dynamite and set it in every square inch of the state, he would do as much damage as he has done. (Ones earlier did bad too)

I DO NOT want to think of him getting to the white house! He's a disaster on two legs! And definitely in coordination with the globalists!!!

Expand full comment

The economically illiterate will school the innumerate.

Expand full comment

Government at all levels is packed with innumerates. Easily verified by attending a school committee meeting. In my town (avg property tax ~$14K), these boobs are responsible for spending nearly 70% of our property taxes. While enrollment continues to decline, they want to build another new school. Now do this at the state and federal levels.

Expand full comment

"Government at all levels is packed with innumerates."

Oh, it's more than just government, my friend.

I'd say People is packed at all levels with innumerates.

Expand full comment

Like a can packed with sardines?

Expand full comment

If you're told that most accidents at home occur on the top or bottom step of the stairs and your solution is to remove the top and bottom steps, you're in the world of Kamala 'solutions'

Expand full comment

From Jeff Childers, USA lawyer’s substack today. His comment on the British woman who just won £13,000 court case for praying silently in front of an abortion clinic.

“Isabel’s was a terrific example of the tactics I suggested to British conservatives on Saturday. Be polite. Don’t ‘protest.’ You don’t need to ‘protest’ — they can’t even withstand silent prayer. Follow the rules. Force them to go full Orwell. File claims, complaints, and small lawsuits. Flood the zone”. Your welcome

Expand full comment

However....election gouging is real and terrifying.

Expand full comment

Ballot harvesting...

Expand full comment

The premise is the conclusion: Progressives don't want to be held responsible for their ignorance, so the conclude there must be some other reason for inflation. Facts be damned, they believe what they want to believe. Progressivism is a cult.

Expand full comment

I think they want to have their cake and eat it too. Borrow trillions to buy vote and fight wars, but blame the inflation on someone else. Remember, it's the SPENDING part that's important to them.

Expand full comment

A cult of the ignorant.

Expand full comment

Big time

Expand full comment

I'd rather have price gouging than price controls. At least with gouging I can shop elsewhere. Price controls make it impossible/illegal.

Expand full comment

Can you shop elsewhere? Not in a lot of rural areas where the only grocer standing is Wal-mart. Most of America isn't competitive. Wal-mart, fortunately, does not gouge in my experience. But it could, and if it did, there would be nothing that could be done about it, realistically speaking.

Expand full comment

Actually, someone else could just move in and provide the goods necessary. Walmart has not existed for all eternity, and can disappear tomorrow. Ever heard of sears?? Kmart??? No business is guaranteed to last forever.

Expand full comment

Someone won't move in before WalMart goes bust: they're good competitors. If Walmart decides to close with two weeks' notice, how long does it take to open a business, hire workers, set up supply chains, etc? Airy-fairy imagined competition is for Ricardians and the Left; we are members of the reality-based community here.

Federal Reserve money printing has promoted gigantism in the American economy. They're more efficient but more fragile. At some point soon the end of the fiat dollar will remove the supports for hypertrophy. It would be best if we stimulate more robust, local competitors BEFORE Walmart disappears "tomorrow."

Expand full comment

What makes people think that supply chains, commercial transactions, etc (all the things that are THE ECONOMY) can be made "stabile" by freezing them in amber?

An economy is an ever flowing river. Once you damn it up, it becomes a stagnate, brackish, festering swamp of despair.

FDR doubled down on price controls with wage controls - which ended up giving us third-party paid healthcare. People spend a lot more time complaining about healthcare prices today than they did in 1942 when consumers paid for nearly all their own healthcare.

Expand full comment

So after telling us for years that Trump’s a dictator the D’s now want to dictate prices?

Also, I think that the folks standing behind Harris don’t give a sh*t about her domestic program ideas as long as gets with the foreign policy agenda.

Expand full comment

Isn't the main aim just to get into office?

Expand full comment

Suggested reading, Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. Scratch that, make it mandatory.

Expand full comment

Walter Williams had some great explanations on it too.

Expand full comment