Let Me Explain

Let me start by saying that this is pretty controversial (please don't start mentally screaming at me). The big, ominous question: whether the government should operate stuff, or whether businesses and individuals should. The answer is not that black and white. So, what is privatization? Privatization is when the government takes the programs it's operating and sells a bunch of them off to businesses in the private sector (the sector not operated by the government). If the government is the one operating infrastructure services, or education, or the energy industry, we say this stuff is in the public sector . When the government takes it and sells it off to businesses or individuals not connected to the government, it moves stuff from the public to private sectors, and we call that privatization . So why would anybody want privatization? Well the reality is that the government is usually really terrible  at operating stuff. If it operates energy, for instance, it might constrai...

You've seen news about the debt ceiling. You've seen news of a shutdown. You've seen those big counters in cities like Las Vegas that tally the national debt and broadcast it for you to see how huge it really is more than $36 trillion , in fact. That's around $106,000 per citizen. But the question that doesn't get answered often is: why is having a large national debt bad in the first place? If the government can just keep borrowing and spending this money, then what danger is it in? The answer lies in interest (the money kind. You'll soon see that politicians literally aren't interested in you at all). When the government borrows money from a bank, it has to promise  to give it back, plus some extra interest. Because no bank would ever tolerate the government taking money and never giving it back, the government does a Ponzi scheme to "finance its debt". The government takes out a loan, uses the money on its spending, and needs to pay it back. The...

It is the dawn of yet another analysis of inflation. The sun slowly rises as the connection between "printing money", banks, interest rates, and inflation becomes apparent to the reader. It is time: for yet another blog post. To get the cogs turning, let's take a look at the Federal Reserve. Before we continue, I want to make sure that you know something very important : the Federal Reserve is independent  of the federal government, and doesn't have to follow its thoughts at all. We learned two posts ago that the federal government can basically conjure up money from a black hole. How does the black hole work? Why does it exist? Let's look at an example situation to find out: Remember 2020? COVID? Remember when everyone started panicking about people not buying stuff or borrowing money from banks as much anymore? Back in 2020, the Federal Reserve, or the Fed, started seeing a downturn in economic activity. What it did was it basically gave banks money and said ...

Last time, we talked about how the really awesome, amazing government spending  actually really awesomely  causes demand-pull inflation. What we didn't talk about is how the government actually gets its money, and how it lies to everyone about the money's source. The government gets money through taxes. It uses these taxes to spend on things that are supposed to improve our lives. I bet you've seen your taxes go up in the last few years, slowly creeping onto more and more of your income. A quick Google search, though, tells you that the federal tax levels have remained relatively stable?!  It even tells you that income taxes specifically decreased when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed in 2017, and those tax cuts expire next year. Well, this doesn't make any sense, now does it? What's going on is a big government lie: while federal tax rates have remained relatively stable, local and state government tax rates have gone up. You're paying more money to your ho...

Politicians are one of two things: stupid or malicious. They hide information that makes them look bad and don't actually fix underlying problems. Why? Because our journalism isn't doing a good job explaining actual political concepts to Americans. Those who try to actually understand what's going on without buzzwords or plain-old bullshitting, typically have to run into dry academic papers or obscure congressional reports with overly-flowery language and obvious political bias. (Trust me, I know from experience). This blog is here to fix that. Here is where you'll find step-by-step explanations on political issues that actually affect you , in Plain Language Land, so you'll actually understand what's going on this time. Without further ado, let's get started. The issue we'll be focusing on today: the economy. You're probably sick of rising prices on gas, groceries, sick of booming interest rates for homes, sick of the ever-rising tax rate that's...