| Inflation is the epitome of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You let a young Republican into one Econ 101 class and suddenly he thinks he knows more than actual economists. All of whom will tell you no one fully understands inflation. You don't know what you don't know. Economics is more of an ideology than a science anyway. Who's to say inflation is even a bad thing, anyway? Argentina's had "hyperinflation" over and over again, and it's not exactly Weimar Germany. All the debt in the economy can never be repaid. Debt vastly exceeds the money supply. What is money, anyway? It's just another form of debt. Dollars and treasury bills are completely interchangeable. In a world that runs on debt, devaluing debt (aka inflation) is a good thing for everyone except the nested-yacht rich (up to a point). These paltry stimulus programs largely went to pad oligarchs' bank accounts through PPP fraud. This doesn't contribute to prices at the grocery store, at all. It did jack up the price of crypto ponzi schemes, and made a bird app worth a meme number for a brief moment in time. That's about it. Giving money to the rich does not stimulate the economy whatsoever. They just hoard it and blow it on nonsense until it vanishes into thin air, from whence it came. They can't spend all that money on goods and services in ten lifetimes. Supply shocks, trade wars, excess corporate profits, and a staggering lack of antitrust enforcement are playing far more of a role with inflation than those $1200 checks. Lastly, raising taxes on oligarchs is pretty much the most popular position in the country, according to polling. Raising taxes is not political suicide at all, provided they're the right kind of taxes. Polls also repeatedly find that Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the country. Unfortunately, public opinion has been scientifically proven to have no effect on policy in the USA. This is not a democracy. It's a fascist police state. |