Virtually everybody agrees that government spending is necessary to support the economy and society in general. We may debate vigorously about what exactly the government should spend money on, but few people will entertain the thought that maybe the government shouldn’t spend money at all. Most fail to even acknowledge that even the best government spending comes with a cost.
Your Thanksgiving meal cost about 20% more than it did last year. Why did it cost so much more? As Peter Schiff explained in his podcast, your more expensive Thanksgiving came to you courtesy of the US government and its inflation tax.
President Biden is expected to announce student loan forgiveness on Wednesday (Aug. 24). The plan will reportedly cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for anybody making less than $125,000 per year.
A lot of people think this is like waving a magic wand — poof — the debt is gone. But somebody has to pay and that somebody is the American taxpayer.
Fifty-one years ago this week, President Richard Nixon slammed shut the “gold window” and eliminated the last vestige of the gold standard.
Nixon ordered Treasury Secretary John Connally to uncouple gold from its fixed $35 price and suspended the ability of foreign banks to directly exchange dollars for gold. During a national television address, on Aug. 15, 1971, Nixon promised the action would be temporary in order to “defend the dollar against the speculators,” but this turned out to be a lie. The president’s move permanently and completely severed the dollar from gold and turned it into a pure fiat currency.
The CPI fell modestly in July, but prices remained near 40-year highs at 8.5%. Meanwhile, President Biden did a victory lap, and Congress passed an “Inflation Reduction Act” that will only make inflation worse.
It’s easy to look at inflation talk as political banter and wonky economic theorizing, but in fact, it hurts real people. As Brazilian economist André Marques explains, it makes us all poorer.
Rapidly rising prices put the squeeze on everybody’s wallets. A recent study showed that inflation is hitting rural Americans particularly hard. According to the Iowa State University report, people in rural areas now spend 91% of their income on expenses alone. Peter Schiff recently appeared on Rob Schmitt Tonight to talk about the pain of the inflation tax.
Ronald Reagan once said the most terrifying nine words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
One of the biggest problems with government help is that it always comes at a cost. And the burden of that cost almost always falls on the very people that big government claims to help – the poor and middle class.
There is more talk of student loan forgiveness. Supporters of these schemes argue that the whole system is inherently unfair, although they rarely talk about who would pay for student loan forgiveness. They also seem oblivious to the fact that the federal government created this problem to begin with.
The annualized interest payment on the $30-plus trillion US national debt increased by over $16 billion in just six months. With the COVID crisis seemingly in the rear-view mirror, the economy allegedly strong, and the Fed raising interest rates to supposedly fight inflation, you’d think this might be a good time for the government to address its spending problem.
Nope.
As Peter Schiff put it in a recent podcast, government solutions make every problem worse.
The solutions being floated to help Americans deal with high gas prices are no exception.
