“On June 10, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) “increased 0.6 percent in May on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.8 percent in April,” bringing the year-over-year price increase on all items to 5.0 percent.
“This was the largest 12-month increase since a 5.4-percent increase for the period ending August 2008,” the BLS noted. And when you take out food and energy, the resulting yearly rise of 3.8 percent was “the largest 12-month increase since the period ending June 1992.””
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“Two main schools of thought contend among those who believe that massive sustained price inflation is either inevitable, or already here: Milton Friedman’s monetarism, and the more bubble-focused analysis associated with the Austrian school of economics.
Friedman’s theory, which was widely accepted in the economics and finance professions decades ago but has been waning since asserts that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” The correlations were indeed observable in the 1960s and 1970s, but the theoretical prediction of increased money supply leading to economy-wide price inflation has been failing to come true for many years now.
Why might that connection between money supply and price be slipping? Theories include the Federal Reserve paying banks interest to just sit on uncirculating money. Another is that the “velocity” of money—the rate at which one dollar is used to purchase goods and services in a given time period—has fallen by nearly half since the beginning of the century.
But America has seen a lot more money lately, with the overall supply of the M1 monetary measure more than quadrupling in just the past 15 months. We have also in COVID times seen government injections of cash into the hands of business and citizens into the trillions, with the Federal Reserve committed to buying as much government debt as the government wants to feed into its spending machine.”
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“Austrians, like monetarists, also see a necessary logical connection between increased money supply and higher prices (adjusted for the amount of goods and services available for the money to buy). But they don’t automatically assume that more money will mechanistically translate into economy wide CPI inflation. Rather, inflation might mostly be expressed in specific sectors, such as stocks, crypto, housing, collectibles, and any other available means to get out of dollars and into something with more perceived promise of holding value.
But those specialized areas where dollars flood into can all too often prove to be bubbles of “malinvestment” which, once popped, can produce economic wreckage and damaging policy reaction, the Austrians warn.”
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“Modern Monetary Theory, the hot modern excuse for the government to spend whatever it wants to spend, posits that as long as any resources of labor or capital in the economy are not currently being used productively, then more money in whatever amount presents no inflationary threat. MMTers will tell you that their hypothesis comports to the reality of the past few decades better than the monetarist insistence that more money equals more (inflationary) problems.
So what’s the MMT and/or governing-Democratic explanation for the recent surge in CPI and sectoral inflation? It’s all about unleashed demand as lockdowns fade and bank accounts swell with federal stimulus bucks, with manufacturers temporarily bidding up prices to make sure they are ready for the pent-up, post-COVID buying spree. After the recovery shakes out, the argument goes, prices will stop noticeably rising.”
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“The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) argued in April that the CPI spike seems scary only because of the “base effect” of rising from very low inflation in the pandemic-scarred year 2020. Fed Governor Lael Brainard assured us last month that we just need to be “patient through the transitory surge.” (Inflation hawks are quick to retort that this is what the Federal Reserve folk insisted back in the 1970s, before our nation’s last big inflationary spree, when for three years, 1979–81, CPI was rising over 10 percent per year.)
The Fed swears it will start tapering off its seemingly endless run of buying Treasury and mortgage-backed securities if the central bank’s inflation target of 2 percent looks poised to be breached long-term. Temporary surges worry the bankers less.
And even if CPI inflation continues to increase like it has this spring, the central bankers are confident they can rein it back in. As Brainard wrote: “If, in the future, inflation rises immoderately or persistently above target, and there is evidence that longer-term inflation expectations are moving above our longer-run goal, I would not hesitate to act and believe we have the tools to carefully guide inflation down to target.””
“America still has the highest uninsured rate in the developed world and the highest health care costs. So long as the health care industry wields a veto pen over any plan that would cut into its profits to address those problems, little is going to change.”
https://www.vox.com/22412118/myanmar-coup-protesters-rohingya
“Iran has chosen a new president, which means Joe Biden faces a new dilemma.
Ebrahim Raisi, the victor in Iran’s recent, tightly controlled election, is not just any hardline Iranian politician. He stands accused of an array of human rights abuses, including the mass killing of political dissidents, and former President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on him. Now, Biden and top aides, led by U.S. special envoy for Iran Robert Malley, are facing pressure over whether to lift the sanctions on Raisi as they negotiate with Iran to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.”
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“Raisi, 60, is a cleric with long experience in Iran’s regime, including overseeing its judiciary. He is implicated in many human rights abuses, among them an alleged role in the mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980s. Raisi, who will take over the presidency in August, won an election Friday that was manipulated in his favor after many candidates were disqualified. That manipulation upset a large number of ordinary Iranians, and voter turnout was unusually low.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/17/iran-ships-venezuela-495013
“Senate Republicans spent months praising Joe Manchin for his insistence on cross-party compromise. Next week they will almost surely end his hopes for a bipartisan deal on elections.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he believed all 50 Republicans would oppose Sen. Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) slimmed-down elections compromise, which focuses on expanding early voting and ending partisan gerrymandering in federal elections. And it’s not clear there’s a single Republican vote to even begin debate on the matter, potentially dooming Manchin’s proposals before they can even make it into the bill.”
“These arguments seem to assume that, to hit the 30 percent goal, the federal government will forbid access to public land, seize private property, and ignore the conservation benefit of working lands that are managed with biodiversity in mind.
But as far as we know, that’s not what the government is proposing, according to Collin O’Mara, the CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. “This is the furthest from a land grab,” O’Mara said. “There’s nothing proposed that affects private property rights.”
On public lands, which are far more expansive in the West, the Interior Department may continue to restrict access to extractive industries, said Weiss, of the Center for Western Priorities. In late January, the Biden administration paused new oil and gas leasing on federal lands.
But those restrictions are unlikely to target working lands, said Weiss and O’Mara. On the contrary, 30 by 30 is likely to open up more federal land to recreational activities, and even make them more productive through restoration and better management, they added. Just last month, the Interior Department announced a proposal for the largest expansion of hunting and fishing opportunities in US history. (The Interior Department declined to comment for this story.)
When it comes to private lands, the government has made it clear that any conservation efforts will be voluntary for the landowner. “The government rarely uses eminent domain,” Weiss said. (A notable exception would be the Trump administration, Weiss added, which seized private property to build the US-Mexico border wall, though outcry from conservatives was absent then. “That is the biggest irony here,” he said.)”
“American women are choosing to have fewer babies and the result is that America’s total fertility rate in 2020 has fallen to a record low of 1.64 births per 1,000 women between 15 and 44 years of age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Demographers define replacement fertility as 2.1 children per woman over the course of her lifetime; one to replace her, another to replace the father, and a tenth extra to account for children who die before reproducing and those who churlishly refuse to make their parents into grandparents. Populations with sustained sub-replacement fertility will eventually begin to shrink.”
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“As recently as 60 years ago, the average American woman gave birth to 3.6 kids during her lifetime. Following the introduction of effective birth control pills, the U.S. total fertility rate began to fall steeply from 1960 to a nadir of 1.74 children per woman in 1976. Fertility rose again to hover just below replacement until 2007 when it began its contemporary drop to the lowest rate ever recorded. The U.S. fertility rate is now basically the same as that of other rich developed countries.”
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“modernity offers people a multitude of life options that compete with the bearing and rearing of children. Evidently, the trade-offs between work, travel, socializing, entertainment, sports, and parenting that people are making reduce fertility. The upshot is that modern people considering their options are voluntarily choosing to have fewer children.”
“Facebook is indeed a powerful and influential company, but these people all need a reality check. The social media site does not wield nearly as much power as actual governments. Facebook doesn’t drop bombs on its enemies or send troops to bust down their doors and kill them. Facebook can’t put people in jail, or confiscate their money, or forbid them from gathering in groups, or force children as young as three to wear masks while they play sports outside. The only thing Facebook can do is stop people from posting on Facebook.”