“It is true that taxes and prices have risen. But this did not happen in a vacuum. For much of 2020 and a chunk of 2021, we paid people to stay home, and printed money with wild abandon. What the hell did we think would be the consequences?”
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Samizdata quote of the day – inflation should not be a surprise editionJune 24th, 2024 |
 21 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – inflation should not be a surprise editionLeave a Reply |
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Who is the “We” in this?
I didn’t ask to get locked down.
I didn’t need money until they effectively made my business illegal.
They didn’t pay me to stay at home.
I wasn’t an employee, so my employer didn’t get paid to pay me to stay at home.
I wasn’t self-employed, so didn’t get paid to stay at home.
I wasn’t unemployed, so didn’t get dole without turning up at the job centre.
I was a contractor, and needed to show that my previous income was above an arbitary threshold to receive payments, which it wasn’t because I’m a contractor and all my clients had been instructed by the government not to employ me.
And my tenant had been told she wasn’t allowed to open her shop, so to keep her in business I dropped her rent – so even that backup disappeared. She did eventually go bankrupt – 50% rent but zero customers is not viable.
John Galt, he’s talking about the mass of respectable, mainstream opinion, not Samizdata readers!
Let’s not get pedantic. There’s undoubtedly cause for shame that do many people seem to treat what happened as a shock. Anyone with familiar with basic economics could see it coming. (Which excludes much of the chattering class.)
We live in a country where the 400-500 Billion (400 to 500 Billion) Pounds spent on, wildly misguided, Covid policies (supported by all political parties) is ignored – and where people think (because the media tell them so) that “the Lis Truss budget crashed the economy” – even though that budget never went into effect.
Let the above paragraph sink in.
The American bureaucracy approach is to deny there is massive inflation – they deny the obvious by producing rigged prices indexes.
And, as with such things as temperature figures (where the once honest “Met office” now wildly distorts the truth), I fear the British bureaucracy will go the same way.
Paul, people want to evade and forget all this. To admit that the lockdowns – particularly the second and third ones – were misconceived is a step that a lot of people will not take. I kind of supported the first period because we did not know how dangerous, or not, covid was, but I quickly realised we were being sold a pack of lies in terms of alternative approaches, such as the Swedish one.
There’s no big shame in admitting we got this approach wrong. But what I find disgraceful is how hardly anyone is willing to challenge the whole basis of the policy, at root, in measured terms. There is this fear that if we oppose lockdowns, then everything else in “respectable” opinion unravels. It is a herd mentality, all the more dangerous because it presents itself as liberal and reasonable. But it isn’t
@Johnathan Pearce
There’s no big shame in admitting we got this approach wrong.
It depends on who you ask. If you are a politician then you NEVER admit you were wrong. If you are a scientist you quickly admit you are wrong — because that is part of the scientific process.
Which tells you which of these two domains dominated in both the handling of Covid policy and the handling of any future such pandemic.
I’m amused by the Left here in the States acting shocked about inflation.
Like, everyone else TOLD you “money printer go brrrt” did this, ever time, always, inexorably.
You didn’t listen and said “But Modern Monetary Theory Says We Can Just Do Anything”.
And now you’re wailing and gnashing your teeth because exactly what was warned about happened, in exactly the way it was predicted to, and you just Can’t See How, Must Be Corporations Raising Prices Just Because*.
(* The memes that literally claim “it’s just corporations all raising prices to make more profits!” always baffle me. So … why do they ONLY do that while the money printer is going brrrt, rather than every year all the time constantly?)
A lot of “respectable” opinion about the role of government does unravel. Mostly, the opinions that depend on policymakers being so smart that it’s worth forcing people to do what they say. Once you doubt that, there’s precious little reason for most of the policies to exist at all — an existential threat for people who manage policy for a living, or receive subsidies as a matter of policy.
Fraser Orr,
Sounds like a cool litmus test to tell the difference between the two, which is not something you can judge based on credentials.
Don’t forget the massive spike in energy prices, all caused by dependence on dodgy foreign supply and net zero nonsense.
If energy costs more then everything costs more.
Runcie Balspune
If energy costs more then everything costs more.
Including EVs and the electricity that powers them. It is also worse than that. A lot more than prices are caused by high energy costs.
The war in Ukraine for example is largely caused by energy prices. If oil had sold at Trump era prices or even better, even lower, Russia would simply not be able to sustain its invasion. Truth is, every time you fill up your car you are sending a little bit of cash to Putin, buying a few more bombs for his war machine, or giving money to the people who give money to Hamas, because Biden and his cronies are so beholden the the crazy green wing of the progressives.
How did all of those politicians get hired by the NIH, and what did they do with all of the scientists who used to work there?
John Galt:
But the SQotD does not say that “we” (that is you, not me, because i was not locked down) asked to be locked down.
It says:
And you did pay people to stay home. And, to be fair, so did i; though a much smaller number of people.
Fraser:
Bobby:
I get the point that bobby is making, but the truth is that scientists have never been ready to admit that they are wrong.
It was not the Church that resisted against the heliocentric theory, it was the Aristotelians.
And it was the Cartesians that resisted against the Newtonian theory of gravity.
In our own lifetimes, we have seen how scientists resisted the germ theory of gastric ulcers; and how they resisted the cGMP theory of photo-transduction. (OK, the latter is somewhat more esoteric; in fact i had to check on Wikipedia to get it right.)
I believe it was Max Planck who said that scientists do not abandon failed theories, they die believing in them and are replaced by a new generation.
If you are a scientist you quickly admit you are wrong — because that is part of the scientific process.
Fraser, as was found out, a lot of supposed scientists appear not to be all that honest either, or least those who spoke out, such as those involved in the Great Barrington Declaration, got treated badly.
Yep. My point was obscured by the lack of a good HTML sarcasm font. 😉
Our growing mistrust of “scientists” has been driven by the speed-of-light reversals of “scientific” opinions that the quest for grant money causes.
Samizdata owners, that sounds like a good thing to add next to the b i link quote buttons at the top of the comment box – a sarc button that perhaps puts the text into a different font with visible <sarc> tags at each end.
Bobby: I get your sarcasm. My point was that the reluctance of scientists to accept falsification goes back at least to Galileo.
Although, i do think that the opinion supposedly of Max Planck is too cynical.
There are scientists who accept falsification. A minority, perhaps, but, in the long term, an influential minority.
One of the difficulties, for me as a loyal Conservative member, about discussing the real cause of inflation – the vast, and counter productive, spending on Covid policies (such as the lockdowns) is who was Chancellor in the period.
I can say that all parties supported the policies (which they did), I can say that the Labour Party wanted even more extreme policies (which is true), but the stubborn fact remains that a certain person was Chancellor during the Covid period and buried us in this spending.
I have a similar problem discussing mass immigration – the true cause of such things as the housing mess, as some ten million people (TEN MILLION) have entered the country over the last couple of decades.
If I mention the mass immigration – the reply comes “and who has been in office for the last 14 years?” – I can say that the Labour Party will be worse (which they will be), but I am put on the defensive.
Johnathan Pearce – quite so.
The scientists who told the truth in the, anti lockdown, Great Barrington Declaration were treated horribly.
Just as the scientists and medical doctors who tried to use generally effective Early Treatments for Covid were persecuted. Persecuted for the “crime” of SAVING LIVES – rather than letting people die of a disease that could be successfully treated, if caught Early.
And scientists and medical doctors who warned about the Covid “vaccines” were also persecuted – by the media, and by government and corporate healthcare employers.
Medical scientists and doctors faced vicious abuse – and also the loss of their jobs, throwing themselves and their families into a terrible situation.
Whereas those scientists and doctors who lied were greatly honoured (some even got knighthoods).
Perverse incentives.
Behaving well – gets you punished. Behaving badly – gets you rewarded.
Such is the condition of the modern world.