Inflation: From Whence?

Inflation is a condition that comes about when there is more money in circulation in the economy than is necessary to cover the amount of wealth in the economy. Everybody should know that wealth is not money; wealth is what money can buy.

Just as is the case with individuals, governments become indebted when they borrow money. And, like individuals, governments borrow money when they want to spend more more money than they are able to expropriate from the private sector in taxes. In the U.S., banks don't print currency; only the U.S. Treasury can do that. Moreover, governments the world over have reserved the authority to print currency to themselves. Because only they can control the amount they print, governments are the only entities that can cause inflation. There is no incentive in the private sector to do that. It would be insanity.

Rights Are Not Granted By The Government

I read a Mark Steyn piece and was very impressed with the simplicity of his expression of the real guts of the operative portion of the concept of "rights. It is likely that Liberals will not understand what he said on the matter because they suffer from a highly skewed mental set. (If you do not believe that, let me know and I'll post a copy of a study that should prove it to you. It was done by a Liberal, no less.)

What Steyn said in his piece was: (substituting (in brackets) for his words "sovereign" and "state" the synonymous term "government") “RIGHTS” ARE NOT THOSE THINGS GRANTED BY THE [GOVERNMENT] AND ENUMERATED IN STATUTE, BUT THE PRECISE OPPOSITE. THEY'RE RESTRAINTS UPON THE [GOVERNMENT.] THEY'RE NOT ABOUT WHAT THE [GOVERNMENT] ALLOWS YOU TO DO, BUT ABOUT WHAT THE [GOVERNMENT] IS NOT ALLOWED TO DO TO YOU." (Emphasis mine.)

If those ideas sound suspiciously similar to those expressed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, you are correct. (For those who may have forgotten, those amendments are also known as the "Bill of Rights.")

Why Do Politicians Love Keynes's Theory?

Keynes's Theory is not only, itself, logically bankrupt, it ultimately must cause bankruptcy to all those adhering to it. Politicians love Keynes's Theory because it provides them an excuse for believing that government spending and borrowing do not have limits. Thus, they can evade all responsibility for the negative consequences of their redistribution of private funds they strip from the economy. It is application of The Theory that gives them their unreasonable power.

Simple arithmetic logic explains why there must be a limit on government spending and borrowing. Tax money is not created from thin air. By its nature, taxes constitute "legalized theft." Taxes can be taken by government vultures only through a confiscatory process from those who, through their hard work, must first earn the money. The well of taxation is not without a bottom.

It is right thinking to criticize the greed of the political elite. But, the average citizen must also disabuse himself of a different kind of greed: the greed engendered in him by the insidious process of his accepting government largesse. It is upon this kind of greed that the political elite feed themselves at the expense of the citizenry.

The bottom line is: if the average citizen is not willing to resist the temptations offered by the political elite, to accept from the government money he has not earned, he has very poor standing to criticize the same activity from the political elite. "Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to see the beam of wood in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck from your eye,’ while you yourself don’t see the beam in your own? You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."

The average citizen must stop suspending logic and understand that the largesse does not come from the government. It comes from his fellow citizens (after the government has taken its "pound of flesh" from it.) A key element that can lead toward economic salvation is reduction of the dependence of the citizenry on taxation-funded benefits. This will, in turn, reduce the power of politicians to create new reasons to raise taxes from which, like the mafiosi, they will "wet their beaks."