"Experts" Weigh In with Ideas to Combat Inflation
With Experts Like These, Who Needs Charlatans?
The Washington Post put out a piece a few weeks ago titled, “What should the White House do to combat inflation? Experts weighed in with 12 ideas.”
“12 ideas,” huh? From “experts,” huh? Am I the only one these days that wants to barf when you hear the word “expert” coming out of the mouths of the political establishment and their corporate press? The world has suffered enough from this unquestioning appeal to authority. Whether it was trusting The Science™ or that price inflation is transitory or that Jussie Smollett was beaten up by MAGA-hats at 2 AM after grabbing a Subway sandwich in Chicago … it has all been a charade. Adam Corolla gets it right when he takes a shot at the establishment and says, “What have you guys been right about?”
Anyway, so do you think that at least one of these magical 12 ideas to combat inflation might be to end inflationary monetary policy? Ha! Think again, sucker.
Two of the experts even deny that the price inflation is a problem! Darrick Hamilton and Demond Drummer claim the price inflation is politically driven and is simply a “wildly overblown attempt to stop progressives.” Therefore, they argue the government should double-down on spending programs.
“Let’s not let the bravado of politically driven inflation anxiety deter us from public investments to our environment and our economic security. Rather than looking at current price levels and concluding that our stimulus went too far, we should be looking at the looming eviction crisis and concluding that our stimulus hasn’t gone far enough.”
But, the most destructive idea out of the lot is from Todd Tucker — director of governance studies at the Roosevelt Institute. He calls for price controls.
“To ensure that the wealthy do not bid up prices for essential items, the time is now to begin destigmatizing greater democratic control over price levels.”
Hey, Todd! Prices mean things. Prices are a function of supply and demand. Democratic mobs know nothing of scarcity and production costs!
But I don’t think Todd cares about the price system. Central planners are going to centrally plan. Their arrogance is strong.
Presumably with a straight face, he writes that the government should start preparing now to grow its bureaucratic price-enforcement army!
“… at the peak of price control efforts in World War II, the government employed 160,000 price regulators. While widespread use of digital payments could make enforcement easier, the economy has grown substantially, and it is likely many more officials would need to be hired. That capacity won’t be developed overnight, so if we think future crises might merit price controls, expanding governments’ abilities now to track prices throughout supply chains is a must.”
WTF!?
With experts like these, who needs charlatans?