Casting blame avoids thoughtful consideration…
“Inflation” is an economic term whose meaning—and explanation of its cause(s)—has evolved over nearly two centuries. For at least the last half century “inflation” has been synonymous with a rise in prices, that is, a rise in the “cost of living,” but the commonly cited reason for price inflation has carried over from the original meaning of the term. When the term “inflation” was coined it referred specifically to the printing of paper money (“currency”) in excess of the value held by the government as “hard” currency, traditionally gold, available to back it. Things you might want or need to buy were considered to have intrinsic value vis-à-vis the value of gold. If the “price” of one of those things rose it was on account of the government using its power to print more paper money, that is, to “inflate” the amount of currency, thereby devaluing a given unit of that currency (e.g. a dollar) with respect to gold reserves.
The meaning of inflation as explained to me as a youth was tied up in terms like the “gold standard”, Fort Knox (actually the United States Bullion Depository established at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in 1936), and cautionary worry about the Great Depression and “hyperinflation”. Today we hear, and mostly dismiss as crackpots, people talking about a “return to the gold standard”. All of this references a time when the average citizen was aware of and debated issues around the value of money, a time when things you might want to buy were considered to have an intrinsic value beyond the paper dollar price attached to them at a given moment, a price that rises only on account of the government printing, i.e. “inflating”, the money supply.
With that background it should be no surprise that Republicans today immediately place the blame for “inflation” (“price inflation” in the modern meaning of the word) on any social spending—as if there were no other cause for the price of anything to rise. It is as if Republicans considered the law of supply and demand were abruptly suspended. Instead, it is suddenly about “too much spending”. Our eastern Washington Republican Congresswoman, devoted spreader of Republican talking points, adopted this blame game with gusto.
A December 8 email from Rep. McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) comes with a simple subject line: “Biden’s inflation … it’s getting worse.” (Here is the whole email.) The missive opens with a dark, brooding photo of President Biden with the line “Americans Are Paying More Because of Joe Biden”. Perhaps McMorris Rodgers’ “Executive MBA” (the abridged version of a Masters of Business Administration) never covered economics—a convenient omission since her primary purpose is to focus blame and derision rather than present and discuss complex issues. It is far easier to blame Joe Biden for the purpose of eventual electoral advantage than it is to address corporate profits growing at the expense of consumers.
Judd Legum, whose email Popular Information I consider a must-read, offered the following video as part of his post “Inflation exposed: The REAL reason prices are going up.” I urge you to spend the seven minutes to watch it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzY_SHNxWXQ
If you have another eight minutes watch the following video. The economic basics presented by the British commentator make a mockery of CMR’s simplistic blame game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMAELCrJxt0
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Whether she understands this or not, McMorris Rodgers is preaching the credo of the “monetarists”, a school of economic thought most associated with the leading“Chicago School” economist, Milton Friedman, and with the neoliberal ideas that have driven the Republican (and to a lesser extent the Democratic) Party for the last forty years. Friedman (1912-2006) coined and often repeated “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”, a convenient and appealing (for some) simplification of how the economies work, a simplification that always puts the blame for price inflation on the government “printing” too much money. Friedman, like the Republicans who continue to follow his ideas, reduced complex economic problems to a simple formulation and then hammered the idea into listeners’ minds by repetition, effectively precluding the consideration of alternate points of view, such was his influence. For example, see this presentation on inflation: