THE PRICE OF POPCORN
My wife and I went to see the Elvis movie that’s now in theaters. I ordered a small bag of popcorn. It was $9.45. You could have knocked me over with a feather. My wife loved the Elvis movie, I not so much. It covered a lot of ground we already knew. I was in high school when Elvis exploded on the scene. Dwight Eisenhower was president. I wonder what Ike would have to say about today’s liberal agenda. I’m sure he would hate it. Hardly anybody alive in the 1950s would be happy about the direction of our country. They would shake their heads in dismay and disbelief. The growth of government and its massive spending on endless subsidies and social programs would shock the citizens of yesteryear.
Apparently, we are following Keynes playbook to the end of the road. That means the government will always try to stimulate the economy out of a recession through money and credit creation. When we have the inflation that follows all this easy money, the government (through the Fed) will try to cool things off just as it is doing now. Call it the road to perdition, because sooner or later, one of these policies isn’t going to work. I suspect that the depression the government so desperately wants to avoid will ultimately occur, but only after a runaway inflation that cannot be stopped. Years ago, I had an economics mentor who would say to me, “Jimmy, we’re going to hit the gutter.” I hope he is wrong about that, but there is a chance he will be right. That would be the worst of all worlds. There are so many people that rely on the government these days, they better get it right or there will be hell to pay.
