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The Screw You Act, Inflation & How Low Gas Prices Will Go - Top 3 Takeaways – August 9th, 2022
- The Screw You Act. Listening to and reading the news reporting pertaining to what Democrats dubbed the “Inflation Reduction Act”, is about as intellectually insulting and painful as listening to economists and related politicos trying to tell us that we’re not in a recession. Here’s a quick question for you. Did last year’s huge Democrat spending plan called The American Rescue Plan Act, rescue America? You know the plan which invented $1.9 trillion dollars out of thin air, watering down the value of the dollar in your pocket, and handed out like it was free, though it must be paid back with interest. Did that Act rescue us or...did it quite literally create the crippling 41-year high inflation rate resulting in the average American being 4% worse off than a year ago net of inflation? Yet the news media dutifully reported it as The American Rescue Plan Act, did they not? Compare that to the coverage of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation. That was the name of the legislation. And did it include actual parental rights in education? Yes, it did. Yet what was it called, and for that matter is still called when referenced? “Don’t Say Gay”. Now, was there anything in the legislation which prohibited anyone from saying gay? Of course not. And the point is this. Both political parties are inclined to engage in marketing ploys with the names and characterizations of legislation – the left and their allies in almost all of news media is relentlessly dishonest in their reporting of it. And that takes me back to what’s moving in congress currently.
- There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that’s deflationary about this legislation. Aside from the stuck on stupid maneuver of raising taxes during a recession (not that there’s ever a good time to do it), is new spending on a host of leftist wish lift items totaling $433 billion. Now, we’re already in a recession brought about by 41-year high inflation, brought about by Biden’s energy policy and last year’s American Rescue Plan Act. Yes, I know they say that mythically more revenue will be generated over many years than this will spend over the short term. But you’d have to be stuck on stupid to believe them. Remember these are the same people who said they were rescuing America with their legislation last year, told you inflation was only transitory when it hit and now will tell you we’re not in a recession when we’re in one. I’ll make this simple. Higher taxes don’t equal a better economy. Ever. More government debt spending doesn’t equal less inflation. Ever. If the news media were honest about what this legislation is, or for that matter what the American Rescue Plan Act was, these would be called the Screw You Acts – because that’s what they are by way of what the actual policy does. The radical transformation of the US economy continues by the creation of an ever-larger federal government and with higher taxes which inherently reduces personal liberty in lieu of government dependence.
- How low will Florida’s gas prices go? Using the phrase I coined during the Great Recession, as I attempted to find a silver lining where there were few, the good thing about a bad economy is that stuff gets cheaper. That’s a simple matter of supply and demand. As we can afford less, we buy less. As we buy less, prices come down. One of the easiest ways to see that the world, not just our country, is in recession, is to see what’s happened to oil prices over the past couple of months. Despite negligible additional supply coming onto the market, the price of oil is off about $35 per barrel over the highs hit in June. That’s telling you there’s less demand. But thankfully, lower gas prices. But with gas prices across Florida having already come down by $1.20 from June’s highs – how much lower will Florida’s gas prices go? There’s room for them to come down a bit more. With oil prices having averaged $88 a barrel most recently, that translated to an average price of about $3.45 per gallon about two weeks out. That means without further downward movement in oil prices, another 33 cents per gallon is set to come off the price at the pump. And the other bit of good news is that of course energy was key to creating the 41-year high inflation rate, so lower prices are key to reducing it. I’m confident inflation peaked in June at this point with the steady decline in energy costs since that peak. No, stuff is not cheap. But it is cheaper, which is the good thing about a bad economy.