Raising social involvement, self awareness and self improvement topics, because our communities are the sum of our personal beliefs, behaviors, action or inaction. Only "we" can improve our family, work place, school, city, country, etc.
Sunday, March 1, 2026
Here We Go Again :-(
So much for America First... It looks like we did not learn from Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq... I wonder how much this distraction will cost in tax dollars and American lives?
When I listen to the Sunday morning news shows in the interims between soccer matches, what I hear is criticism of outcomes without any attempt to understand how and why the decisions were made that led to them. I have this feeling most often in relation to inflation. From the news coverage, one would think that Biden had a choice between inflation and non inflation and out of pure evil, chose the former. There is no sense at all that the current issue of inflation is just the most recent version of the debate between soft an hard money supporters that has existed as long as there has been cash. Similarly, we have reversed the skepticism of interventionism that has a long history in our country, and became firmly settled in our foreign policy with only a few, disastrous exceptions. We are now once again the world's policemen, without sense at all of why for generations now, we thought assuming that role is a bad idea.==Hiram
The irony of our economic policy is that as much as we abhor inflation, there were solid reasons for adopting measures we knew were inflationary. We chose them for other reasons. In the same way, President Trump who campaigned against inflation very successfully, has at every turn in his administration, adopted policies which whatever their other virtues, tended to raise prices. Inflation is sort of a dirty word in our politics. When they speak of it, our leaders reflexively oppose it. But if we go just a little deeper, inflation just isn't an unmixed evil. Lots of people benefit from it direcly, and those people are often influential in deciding policy. In addition, a great many more people who may be hurt by inflation itself, benefit in other ways from inflationary policies. A lot of our politics these days has to do with the sorting out of this complexity.==Hiram
When I listen to the Sunday morning news shows in the interims between soccer matches, what I hear is criticism of outcomes without any attempt to understand how and why the decisions were made that led to them. I have this feeling most often in relation to inflation. From the news coverage, one would think that Biden had a choice between inflation and non inflation and out of pure evil, chose the former. There is no sense at all that the current issue of inflation is just the most recent version of the debate between soft an hard money supporters that has existed as long as there has been cash. Similarly, we have reversed the skepticism of interventionism that has a long history in our country, and became firmly settled in our foreign policy with only a few, disastrous exceptions. We are now once again the world's policemen, without sense at all of why for generations now, we thought assuming that role is a bad idea.==Hiram
ReplyDeleteThe irony of our economic policy is that as much as we abhor inflation, there were solid reasons for adopting measures we knew were inflationary. We chose them for other reasons. In the same way, President Trump who campaigned against inflation very successfully, has at every turn in his administration, adopted policies which whatever their other virtues, tended to raise prices.
ReplyDeleteInflation is sort of a dirty word in our politics. When they speak of it, our leaders reflexively oppose it. But if we go just a little deeper, inflation just isn't an unmixed evil. Lots of people benefit from it direcly, and those people are often influential in deciding policy. In addition, a great many more people who may be hurt by inflation itself, benefit in other ways from inflationary policies. A lot of our politics these days has to do with the sorting out of this complexity.==Hiram