At The American Spectator, David Catron explains that “The source of inflation isn’t difficult to see.” He continues, “As Milton Friedman famously put it, ‘Inflation is caused by too many dollars chasing after too few goods.'” He writes (abridged):
As has been widely reported, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the latest inflation numbers last Thursday, and they were ugly.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 7.5 percent during the 12-month period ending in January, its largest one-year spike in 40 years.
This dwarfs the inflation rate of 1.4 percent that President Biden and the Democratic Congress inherited in January of 2021. BLS also reported that real earnings decreased 1.7 percent from January 2021 to January 2022. All of this is directly attributable to the incompetent economic policies of the Biden administration and wild spending by congressional Democrats in the midst of a supply chain crisis.
Inflation on this scale is new to most Americans. According to the Brookings Institution, more than half the current U.S. population had not yet been born the last time prices were rising at such an alarming rate. Moreover, considering the decades-long decline in the quality of public education, the direct relationship of reckless Democrat spending to the skyrocketing cost of living may not be clear to most Americans.
The source of inflation isn’t difficult to see — if one has been taught basic economics. As Milton Friedman famously put it, “Inflation is caused by too many dollars chasing after too few goods.”
The unfortunate reality is that neither Biden nor his congressional accomplices have any idea how to fix inflation.
The only way to get the problem under control is to deprive the Democrats of their congressional majorities next November and send Biden packing in 2024.
It is useful to remember that the last time we saw an inflation rate of 7.5 percent, that marked a major decline from the double digit inflation that characterized the last two years of the Carter presidency.
David Catron is a recovering health care consultant and frequent contributor to The American Spectator.
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