Christianomics: A blog on economics, politics, and law

(4) I hate inflation. To be more specific, I hate when government fails at basic budgeting and steals from its people by creating (printing) new dollars out of thin air. And last year the presses were busy. Nearly a quarter of all US dollars ever to exist were printed in 2020.(1) Looking at this in terms of supply and demand, when the supply increases, the demand (and resulting value) will decrease. This is why the pastry in the picture costs so much more in April 2020 than it did in March 2019. Nothing changed with respect to the pastry itself. It has the same ingredients and the same nutritional value. The only thing that changed is the value of the paper used to purchase it. Simply put, the government is stealing from people’s savings accounts. But rather than taking a measurable quantity of money, it is imperceptibly taking away the money’s quality. And this is what makes inflation so insidious. By the time the effects of inflation are being felt, the damage has already been done....

  Full quote: Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

The law of supply and demand simply says that as demand increases, the price will increase until the supply catches up. What we saw with toilet paper in 2020 and what we are now seeing on the East Coast with gas prices is what happens when government (and private companies) stop the price from rising. We all get shortages. (1). Source: https://fee.org/articles/why-politicians-not-hackers-are-to-blame-for-the-gasoline-shortage/?utm_source=zapier

  "There is a big difference between equality and equity" - Kamala Harris (1) Equality is that of opportunity or equality under the law. This is how most competitions and sports are governed and also the principle applied in Luke 19 when the nobleman gives an equal portion of money to each of his servants. When the nobleman returns he commends the servants who brought a positive return on his investment. It is also noteworthy that the nobleman rewards the servants in proportion to their success. Equity is about equality of outcome. This is something you want in a production environment where you want each product (ie an airplane or a vaccine or even Krispy Kreme doughnuts) to be as good as the next. This provides stability. An example of this can be found in Matthew 20. The master of the house pays people to labor in his vineyards. He goes out throughout the day collecting more and more people to work his vineyard, and at the end of the day he pays them for their labor. To ev...