Are Our Inflation Problems Behind Us?

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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #844
08/28/2023
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1) Are Our Inflation Problems Behind Us?
The debate rages on as to whether we are now in a secular era of persistent inflation, or whether Bidenflation is over thanks to eleven interest rate hikes by the Fed and a slowdown of M2 (money) growth.

This chart from of all people — Larry Summers — is a useful cautionary reminder that during the inflationary decade of the 1970s inflation shot up and down like a yo-yo with periods of falling prices and sucker bear l-market stock rallies, only to be followed by the CPI yanked up again by high tax rates, a runaway federal budget, and Keynesian easy-money policies.

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Twelve years of inflation was finally smothered by the Reagan-Volcker era of tight money, falling tax rates, and deregulation.

Past isn’t always a prelude. But if the 1970s and early 1980s teach us anything, it is that the solution to Bidenflation (just as was the case with Carter inflation) isn’t just higher interest rates. It’s growth policies that expand the supply side of goods and services.

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2) Remembering “Risky Business”
Some of us are old enough to remember Tom Cruise’s first blockbuster movie – Risky Business. It’s a funny, suspenseful, and entertaining story of a naive teenage boy’s rite of passage into adulthood.

One of the memorable life lessons of the movie set in suburban Chicago is delivered by Guido the pimp who puts his arm around Tom Cruise's neck and offers the timeless advice: "In a sluggish economy, never, ever f&@% with another man's livelihood."

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(Maybe someone should do that with Lina Kahn!)

The movie has a happy ending.

But now on the 40th anniversary of the movie’s release, the Chicago Tribune couldn’t resist inserting a new more sinister, and woke interpretation of the classic that only a progressive could come conjure up:

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“Risky Business,” then and now, is an indictment of privilege, and of somehow keeping the uglier world at bay long enough to buy your way into a kind of imperviousness. Except it’s funny and confident and cool and all of its points about the spoils of capitalism get disguised inside a dream of opulence.

The “spoils of capitalism?” Is that really what this feel-good comedy was about?

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3) California Covers Up Its Education Disaster Under COVID
California’s Department of Education is being sued by students whose education was negatively impacted by COVID lockdowns. (That plaintiff list could include every student warehoused in the state’s public schools.) But when attorneys for the students sought expert testimony from academics on the subject, government officials tried to block them from testifying. Academics were told they couldn’t testify if they had done any education work for the state.

The Public Policy Institute of California has attacked this state muzzle policy because the clear intent is to conceal the extent of the disproportionate damage suffered by children from poor families.

“Only 35% of low-income students met state standards in English language achievement (ELA) and 21% were proficient in math,” PPIC reported, “compared to 65% of higher-income students in ELA and 51% in math.”

After a lawsuit and much public criticism, the state finally agreed that researchers could testify on the effects of school closures, but only if they made no use of any data they’d gathered on behalf of the state agencies.

You don’t have to be a Sherlock Holmes to figure out what is going on here. State officials and the teachers' unions don’t WANT the truth to come out — which is that their lockdown policies caused severe and lasting damage to children — especially those from low-income families. Think about the impact this will have on income disparities in the future.

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4) The British Labor Party Is Now Officially to the Right of the Democratic Party in the U.S.
Your editors have been warning for many years that the Democratic Party has been moving in the direction of the socialist Labor Party of Britain.

Nowadays that might be an improvement.

Here’s why. With Britain mired in a slow growth malaise – with the GDP growth an anemic 0.5% per year, the opposition Labor Party has decided to reject a series of left-wing proposals it made under its then-leader Jeremy Cornyn as recently as 2020.

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Rachel Reeves, who would become Treasury Secretary if Labor wins next year’s election, has just promised the party will NOT institute a wealth tax, raise the capital gains tax, or increase the top income tax rate above the current 45 percent. It even promises more homes by relaxing rules on building in the Green Belts that surround British cities. That’s something the ruling Conservatives haven’t done.

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Reeves sounds like she’s become a disciple of the Laffer Curve when she declares: I don’t see a route towards having more money for public services [by] taxing our way there. It is going to be through growing our way there.”

Of course, the far left in Britain is furious and accuses the party of favoring “big business & the 1% over ordinary people. Shameful.”

On the one hand, we’re ecstatic over Labor’s apparent embrace of economic reality. But we’re deeply depressed that while Labor in Britain rejects wealth taxes, capital gains taxes, and income tax rate hikes, every single one of these prosperity-killing schemes is widely supported by Democrats in Congress and by Biden.

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5) Study Finds Paper Straws Might Be Worse for the Environment Than Plastic
We were critical of paper straws because everyone knows they shrivel apart before you finish your drink. Even Kamala Harris admits that. Why is the government forcing consumers to use a clearly inferior product, especially when — as the HOTLINE has reported before — nearly all ocean plastic pollution comes from China, not the United States? But if that wasn't enough of a reason to reject paper straws, a new study finds they may contain chemicals that are harmful to the environment.

According to a new study from Belgian researchers ([link removed]) :

PFAS [poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances] were found to be present in almost all types of straws, but primarily in those made from plant-based materials. These ‘eco-friendly’ plant-based straws are not necessarily a more sustainable alternative to plastic straws, because they can be considered as an additional source of PFAS exposure in humans and the environment (e.g. after degradation in landfills or through incomplete incineration).

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Maybe the government will just have to start mandating that everyone drink out of sippy-cups.

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6) Mission Accomplished

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