In 1971, Nixon used a fiscal crisis to justify severing the dollar's last connection to gold. It was the same old story: "we must vastly expand government power because of a 'crisis.'" The government never gives up these new powers.
Nixon's decision to end the gold redeemability of the greenback was probably the most comprehensive act of monetary expropriation of modern times.
Rising employment is certainly good news for the economy and living standards, but there is much more to this story that is concerning for the economy.
In the era of global lockdowns, we've seen increasing supplies of money, decreasing supplies of goods, and governments financing their citizens to forgo work and stay home. The resulting price inflation should surprise no one.
China is a lesson for those in the West that see China’s rising interventionism as a good idea. Political interventionism means bad capital allocation, worse job creation, and the worst type of inequality, the one that is politically driven.
States with long-lasting lockdowns, covid restrictions, and even mounting vaccine “incentives” have still been hit harder than more laissez-faire states in many cases, even after the virus has had eighteen months to spread well beyond the borders of the initial hot spots.
When we think in terms of the foundational law of property, it's clear that broad charges of aggression through infection are spurious at best.
Fear of China and Iran, combined with the more practical desire for continued “free” money from the federal government, will continue to fuel opposition to any serious movement toward secession.
The capital gains tax cuts off start-ups and smaller entrepreneurs from access to flows of capital. The tax makes society more wasteful, less innovative, and less dynamic.
The collapse of the monetary order in 1971 reflected the massive dislocations and malinvestment of resources that ultimately turned the decade into one crisis after another. Keynesians are doing something similar today.
