History lessons and inflation

Democrats and Liberals just don't get it. Republicans and Conservatives seem no better. What to do?

Joe Biden yesterday said inflation was “zero” in July? It was 8.5% higher than a year previously and the one month hiatus in its surge was little more than a momentary relief at the gas pump. Why do Democrat leaders bullshit Americans?

My father was born in 1915 and started school in 1920, just over 100 years ago. A look back provides a picture of a century’s worth of inflation.

The average life expectancy for men in 1920 was 47 years. Fuel for cars was sold in drug stores. Only 14 percent of homes had a bathtub. Only 8 percent of homes had a telephone.

The average US wage in 1919 was 22 cents per hour. The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year. A dentist earned $2,500 per year. A veterinarian between $1,500 and 4,000 per year. And, a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound. Canada passed law prohibiting poor people from entering into Canada country for any reason.

Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write And, only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school. There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.A.

My father served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII, as a wireless operator Air gunner (WOP/AG) and flew over 800 combat hours in Europe. He was paid $1.38 a day for risking his life repeatedly in the four years he served overseas.

He died at 98 (a lot older than 47). The main causes of death at time of his childhood were pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhea and heart disease. Ninety percent of doctors had no college education.

Inflation destroyed the value of money. But our governments promote inflation, even setting a target of 2% inflation as if it were a benefit. Why? Because inflation is in its essence a tax on the poor and left wing governments like to pretend they are the protectors of the poor but enact policies designed to keep them poor and ensure the liberal elite benefit. Ask yourself why the CEO’s of major corporations and the mainstream media promote the Democrats ideology. Not altruism for certain.

What policies? In addition to encouraging inflation through reckless government spending using borrowed money, Democrats in America and the Liberals and NDP in Canada want higher corporate taxes. They pretend that corporations pay taxes while in fact corporations only collect them, since all costs are passed to their customers in price. Higher taxes do not come out of “profits” since a profitless company simply fails and a company with a low return on capital stagnates as it cannot reinvest cash flows in capital goods to expand output in line with a growing economy.

Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and NDP leaders like Jagmeet Singh and Andrea Horwath love to call corporations “greedy” which is a great smokescreen for higher corporate taxes which punish the poorest in society by adding to the costs of their purchases of food, clothing, transportation, utilities and pretty well everything that industry provides. The pretense that they give a shit about ordinary Canadians is a facade. Eric Arthur Blair (writing as George Orwell) called this rhetoric “doublespeak”.

Isn’t it time we changed our governments in Canada and the United States? Imagine a government that told the truth, balanced its books, let markets operate, dismantled excess regulation, facilitated free speech, kept taxes low, enforced law and order and encouraged home construction by expanding the supply of serviced land.

Probably too much to ask for, since politicians of all stripes can’t seem to stop themselves lying to constituents, but a centrist government in Canada (perhaps under Pierre Poilievre) might take a step in that direction. He would have to move the Conservative party to the centre to succeed, a formidable task. It is certain that a Liberal government under Trudeau or an NDP government under Singh will not sign on to any centrist goals.

In the United States, it is unclear who could lead such a government but it is clear it can’t be any of the current crop of Democrat hopefuls nor is it realistic to think Trump could pull it off. You can’t find anyone in academia since the majority of university professors are Marxist. You can forget industry since the “woke” CEO’s are part of the problem, gathering at WEF in Davos every year to give speeches pretending “climate change” is a real issue (it is not) and then flying home in their private jets.

In wartime, the real leaders who emerged were everyman. Who would have thought a five foot kid named Audie Murphy would become the most decorated soldier in WWII and go on to Hollywood stardom? Who thought a kid from Owen Sound from modest beginnings named Billy Bishop would emerge as the top ace of WWII? Who predicated a sign painter from Munich in the 1930’s who no one had ever heard of would rally the German spirit and create the Third Reich and evolve into the monster who’s legacy is millions of corpses in the Hitler Reich.

We hope the leader who emerges to protect Western democracies from the autocracy the socialists have in mind has a higher purpose.

Somewhere there is a leader who no one has ever heard of who will rise to the challenge as Western society crumbles under the weight of rampant socialism. In history, there has always such a leader and this time will be no different.