[jlisenbe]

Yeah. This is really what it was like. And you even failed to include the Emerald City!!

Men would be real men, and women would be mothers and homemakers. Families would attend church every Sunday morning. The good times, the simple times, would be restored.

And this coming from someone who hasn't attended church in twenty five years??

[jlisenbe]

That's not what you said many months ago. You said then that you became disenchanted with the Lutheran Church.

https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/showth...83#post3854183

At any rate, I sometimes have the same feelings about earlier times. My father was born in 1915 and told me about a lot of things. Some of them were good, but many were not. Medical and dental care were not good. People worked themselves into exhaustion. Infant mortality was a serious issue. Diseases such as diabetes had no treatment. And the list goes on and on. It was not the grand time you imagine it to have been. But I would completely agree that they had a strength of character and a moral backbone that we sorely need today. Perhaps that was the point you were trying to make.

[tomder55]

1900 life expectancy in the US was around 50 years old . Today it is closer to 80 . Humans have thrived since carbon energy technology emerged . That simple rural life was not that good . Humans began to develop technologies to augment or displace nature’s uncertainty. Food supplies and nutrition improved ;as did living standards, and human well ​being . That is because with the technology that were fueled by fossil fuels ,it took few human resources to produce what was needed thus freeing humans for other pursuits .

[tomder55]

Do what your ancestors did -- buy a horse and buggy. Preserve the environment and reduce global warming.

IF you want to see what happens when green lunacy is employed as national policy then all you have to do is see what is happening now in Sri Lanka .Riots, food shortages, power cuts ,a coming famine should be a cautionary tale about what 'green new deal' policies produce. Last year the country’s president decided to convert the entire nation’s food production to organic.As a result losses of up to 70% of food production have been realized. This will force them to import food that is becoming increasingly scarce and expensive world wide. There is no money in the Sri Lanka economy to pay for the needed imports and the government is desperately trying to get a World Bank loan. Since the World Bank encourages such nonsense ,they should help bail the nation out . Green, resilient, and inclusive development: Lessons from Sri Lanka (worldbank.org)

[jlisenbe]

I oftentimes think that our biggest problem is that we look at the Venezuelas and Sri Lankas and think that it won't happen to us.

[tomder55]

it can easily happen . There are massive protests in China . Dutch farmers are in revolt . Food shortages more than anything else is government killers . Argentina owes $45 billion to the IMF and they are in crisis .(small potatoes to our multi-trillion debt)

[jlisenbe]

Debt, which the Bible frequently cautions against, is more likely to bring us down that anything else other than our own lack of national character.

[jlisenbe]

[tomder55]

Inflation is up over 9% with no end in sight. Everyone should be reminded that when inflation finally settles down ,the prices will not drop accordingly .Today's prices are the bench mark give or take some leeway for supply stabilization or demand decreases .

That of course could happen due to wages not keeping up with prices.Real hourly earnings fell 3.6% over the last 12 months.Employers looking to cut expenses have reduced overtime (my company would routinely do that even when the market was good ) Actual, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings fell 4.4%.in that period . Energy and food costs soared even higher than the so called inflation rate Groceries were up 12% and gas a stagering 60%.(things Americans can't live without .

Clueless is in denial and refuses to course correct on things like excessive government spending . That leaves only the Fed to combat inflation . Their only tool to do so is to raise the cost of borrowing .At a minimum I believe they will jack up interest rates another 0.75 points ;but don't be surprised to see a full point increase .

This will eliminate any chance of the so called soft landing without recession ,

[jlisenbe]

Good post, Tom. I shared part of it on Facebook. Sadly, the liberal dems will ignore all of this. The great deflection of blaming it all on the Russkies will continue.

It's incredible how the liberal dems on this site have all fallen aside save one. It seems to illustrate how fragile their ideas are and how much they resent having them questioned.

[tomder55]

What was dis-inflationary ? Answer The Trump Tax reform . Tax cuts to the private sector allowed them to reinvest the money into improving productivity .Federal tax receipts that Clueless brags about are a direct result of the reform that Clueless is allowing to expire .

[tomder55]

The Fed has 2 jobs . It is to primarily to keep inflation in check while also having a low unemployment rate . Chairman Powell knows this and knows that they failed badly. Former Sec Treasury Larry Summers called them out on it.

“In 2021, our central bank let us down quite badly,” .... “As a consequence, they find themselves in a very, very difficult position, not least because they don’t have the credibility that they once enjoyed given their repeated poor forecasting record.”

Fed ‘Let Us Down Quite Badly’ and Still Unrealistic, Summers Says - Bloomberg

I would say they have not had any credibility since maybe Paul Volker's term in the early 1980s . When he took office inflation was 14% and unemployment was approaching double digits . That was because of many years of failed loose money fiscal policy that became so out of wack that both Nixon and Carter tinkered with price controls . (in truth it started in the mid-60s when LBJ decided to finance his Great Society programs and the Vietnam was with cheap money and the Fed never pushed back ).Failed Keynesian economics.... government could tax and spend its way to full employment ;and inflations was acceptable if it put more people to work, had been employed for decades became vogue.

Volker decided to target money supply. He made loose money hard money .Lending rates shot up to over 20% . It took 2 recessions and a lot of pain to correct the bad money policies of the late 60's and the 1970s .

You would think a lesson would've been learned .

Today even as inflation approaches double digits our national leadership is advocating more reckless spending . Will the Fed have the will to resist it ? We already know we can't count on the Treasury . Janet Yellen is a disaster .

[jlisenbe]

It's a Wonderland for pols. Spend, spend, spend without having to raise taxes. It's a sad reflection on the American people for electing such dishonest people and tolerating this. But as I've said, when people believe abortion is good and genders are plentiful, then they are setup to believe just about anything.