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August
25
2022

What's Worse Than Inflation? Depression + Inflation
Charles Hugh Smith

If "markets" controlled by the rich are allowed to distribute essentials, the result will be civil disorder and the overthrow of regimes.

What's worse than inflation? Depression + Inflation. And that's where we're heading. As I explained yesterday in The Fed Can't Stop Supply-Side Inflation, central banks are trying to reduce inflation by crushing demand. This works in eras of abundance, but not in eras of scarcity in which supply constraints drive inflation.

If the FEW essentials--food, energy and fresh water--are supply-constrained, monetary tightening won't reduce inflation. Jacking up interest rates to crush demand won't increase supplies, it only exacerbates the destabilizing inequality of who gets their fill (the rich) and who doesn't (everyone else).

Food shortages caused by drought and other extremes of weather don't stop humans from getting hungry, and neither do central bank-created depressions.

And Depression is what we'll get if central banks continue pursuing their fatal misdiagnosis of the cause and fix of inflation. Central banks can trigger a Depression by jacking up rates and tightening financial conditions, but this won't put an end to humanity's needs for the essentials soaring in price due to scarcity.

Central banks crushing demand won't reduce wages, either, as workers need a living wage or there's no point in even showing up.

After 45 years of losing ground, the worm has finally turned.

The highly unpopular (and misunderstood) solution to supply-constrained inflation is rationing so everyone gets enough to get by regardless of their wealth or income. Without rationing, the rich and powerful engorge themselves as usual, soaking up scarce supplies with their wealth. Those without wealth do without or are pushed into insolvency, generating civil instability that will eventually threaten the integrity of the entire system the wealthy control with such self-satisfaction.

Rather than cut off the water to the poor who are unable to pay soaring utility bills, it's the wasteful rich who should be cut off and fined a couple hundred thousand dollars for squandering resources.

If central banks think causing a Depression will reduce supply-constrained inflation, they will be proven tragically wrong. Depletion and scarcity are not temporary and the central bank "solution"--impoverishing the already poor and laying waste to the economy to reduce demand--won't actually fix supply constraints caused by forces beyond the reach of financial manipulations.

If "markets" controlled by the rich are allowed to distribute essentials, the result will be civil disorder and the overthrow of regimes by those left bereft while the wealthy squander resources because they have the financial means and political power to do so.

What's worse than inflation? Depression + Inflation. What's worse than Depression + Inflation? Depression + Inflation + civil disorder triggered by mass impoverishment and wealth inequality.

Recent podcasts/videos:

The Big Problems And Crash Dynamics Of The Spring/Summer 2022 Housing Market Crisis, Simplified (1:08 hr)

My new book is now available at a 10% discount this month: When You Can’t Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal.

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

My recent books:

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobookRead Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 Kindle, $10 print, ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 Kindle, $8.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
Read the first section for free

Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

 



At readers' request, I've prepared a biography. I am not confident this is the right length or has the desired information; the whole project veers uncomfortably close to PR. On the other hand, who wants to read a boring bio? I am reminded of the "Peanuts" comic character Lucy, who once issued this terse biographical summary: "A man was born, he lived, he died." All undoubtedly true, but somewhat lacking in narrative.

I was raised in southern California as a rootless cosmopolitan: born in Santa Monica, and then towed by an upwardly mobile family to Van Nuys, Tarzana, Los Feliz and San Marino, where the penultimate conclusion of upward mobility, divorce and a shattered family, sent us to Big Bear Lake in the San Bernadino mountains.

 

charleshughsmith.blogspot.com

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