My 2¢ worth

Fifteen and a half years ago, when I started this blog, I tended to blog mostly about politics and economics, along with guns, gun rights, fishing and many of my other interests. It’s hard to say sitting here now when I cut back on that, but space missions became a main topic/interest and I throttled back to close to zero on political things. The list of Post Labels on the bottom of the right column says there have been 1292 posts with “space” as their label and another 337 under the “space-biz” label as I tried to come up with a label for things that weren’t about specific missions or launches, but about a general interest or something off on an undefined future mission. If all I ever posted was those two subjects, that’s not much. I’ve moved to more space and tech related but this is like post 5780 and the two space topics are a small percentage of that. The root cause was that I was simply bored with constantly talking politics.  

The point of all this was to say it has been a LONG time since I’ve done something like I’m doing now. My 2¢ worth on the “blue tsunami”. 

To begin with, I think there has been a ton of evidence for a longer than I can recall that the general population of Republicans were deeply dissatisfied with the results coming out of DC. Especially the results in the Senate under John Thune – I see stuff about firing him every day. People are saying in so many words that “we wanted change and you did nothing.” You can change that to “you didn’t do enough” if you want, but the overall picture is the same. Don’t expect logic from people that mad. Don’t tell the red voters that jumped over to blue that they made everything worse.  

An example from 90 Miles from Tyranny - kinder than many I've seen.

I’ve seen similar things said about Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, but there are lots of things that have been passed by the house, that Senate Leader Thune has just let get overgrown by mold. 

Something related I’ve seen in many times and places for years, but a factor that I don’t see anyone talking about is that people who spend their lives online, be it social media or playing games, are unaccustomed to the fact that things like this take time. Big wheels turn slowly. I tend to think that younger voters expect things to happen much faster than they can, regardless of how fast those governments seem to think they can move. Some of that was done deliberately by the founding fathers, specifically to slow things down. The result, though, is that we reach a point where nothing can happen fast enough to please everyone. That limit is getting shorter as those born with computers everywhere move farther into the voting population. I can see this being a problem when things that have been promised end up waiting on a desk for some reluctant congress critter to finish it and they don’t for whatever reason. 

Another issue I hear being addressed by name is inflation. Inflation can be influenced by the president and the majority party in both halves of the legislature, even when they’re not the same party, but in reality the cause is the Federal Reserve Bank and our “fiat” currency. For those not used to that word, it means they declare the value of the dollar and using the dollar is taken as proof that users concede it’s real. The problem is that when the supply of dollars goes up, the value of each dollar can be assumed to have gone down. Rather than saying the dollar is defined as some amount of some thing that’s valued, be it gold, silver, some stone, or whatever, we effectively ask how many of these slips of paper do you want for what you’re selling.

It’s really the case that whatever you think you’re buying you’re actually trading slips of paper for. Say you’re the seller. Wouldn’t your natural thought be what you could trade those slips of paper for? By extension, let’s say you’re trading something you no longer need versus something you really still need and would rather not trade away. Do you think your tendency would be toward more reluctance than if you were trading something you had lots of, so that you have what you really need and lots of spares? What if you’re selling something and the Fed suddenly says we now have 5% more slips of paper than we had before. Would you be inclined to think you want 5% more slips of paper? 

Why do the central banks and world governments want this? It’s the appearances. It seems everyone thinks their house and property should be worth more as the years go by, just as so many seem to think they should be making more money every year. They can give you more slips of paper and raise the price of your house if they make each slip of paper less valuable. Likewise, your paycheck could be more slips of paper but in terms of buying power you can be worse off.

This turns the “cost of living” in dollars into something that can go up when the Fed creates more dollars or go down if (when) the Fed pulls dollars out of circulation. The reality is this is done simply by saying “it is so”.

To increase the monetary base, the Fed buys securities from any party and pays with a check. That check, written on the Fed, is deposited by a bank in its account with the Fed, thereby adding to its reserves and increasing the monetary base. The same process works for decreasing the monetary base: The Fed sells securities, getting a check from a bank in exchange. When the check is deposited, the bank's balance at the Fed decreases. 

 (From the St.Louis Federal Reserve bank). 

What I meant by “simply saying it is so” is that nothing of value actually changed hands. They simply wrote some numbers on a deposit slip, deposited that slip of paper by writing that number on another form and bing! There's more money! Chances are no actual deposit slips ever existed, and it was all done by typing some numbers into a computerized form. 

Well, that's just some thoughts. FWIW, which approaches zero.