WORD OF THE DAY — INFLATION — THE FED PART-TWO

STAVING OFF INFLATION

Inflation has been defined by economists as “too much money chasing too few goods”. If we use John Maynard Keynes variable Wages to offset Inflation we can see that broken supply chains are a really bad problem.

And another variable causing inflation (that was not created in Keynes’ lifetime) could be the the ‘helicopter money’ of the 2020 – 2021’s that is still trickling down in 2022 to some people via government fiat.

But even with Government payments to every American, too many working people have Wages too low to live on.

On the other hand, raising the Minimum Wage is hard on Main Street small business owners.

So I want to suggest another way to fight inflation. Clearly the broken supply chain problem is on the side of too much money and not enough goods. And the Executive Branch needs to tackle these things as much as possible.

But what I’d suggest for workers who have run out of Wages and government checks is that the Executive branch could expand the U.S. government’s Student Loan Forgiveness Program and offer it to blue collar workers as well.

The U.S. Government’s Student Loan Forgiveness Program

I’m very grateful to our government for offering me a Forgiveness Loan program.

In the 1970s’ after I’d worked for ten years as a University Librarian, I had fifty percent of my college expenses forgiven under a Teacher’s Loan Forgiveness program. I had five years out of ten years of debt paid off for my services.

There are a handful of government forgiveness loans for other types graduates of college who go on to work in public services,  military service, or Americorps (Vista, an overseas version of JFK’s Peace Corps in the U.S.)…etc.

However ten years is a long time, and these programs are quite narrowly specialized in their choices of who is qualified for offerings of forgiveness. Usually it is college students.

And we are in really in need of action now! We can’t wait.

To expand these loan orgiveness programs, I’d suggest the government beef up these programs by targeting short-term projects, such as infrastructure construction, building factories, services industry jobs, solar installations, day care centers, manufacturing, tech, other government forgiveness projects for those workers who are willing to get training for those sectors needing employees.

In this way, workers could be quickly drawn back into the economy: their Wages will offset the too few dollars chasing the hopefully-healed supply chains and will tame inflation, with the setting up of new manufacturing plants and infrastructure projects in the U.S.

Government Support for Worker Training Programs

The problem with government blue-collar and technical training support programs for decades is that the incentive of money has been offered to employers to hire workers and train them in situ. Or else blue collar and tech workers have to pay high educational fees to get training in skills they need.

If the government offered loan forgiveness incentives to essential non-college workers, there would be incentives for many workers to sign up for training and get into workplaces that need more employees. Trainees will find jobs they like, and spend money they can make in the markets.

The sad facts are that privileged men from ivy leagues and wealth who lead our paternalist government agencies treat blue collar workers and welfare recipients like dirt!

Our politicians are no exeception. They appoint white collar employees who can easily get their hands on government funds but then don’t deliver what they were hired to do.

I back up this statement with my previous post about those who trusted election officials in Philadelpha Pennsylvania who committed voter fraud over several years, as well as my time working for two different military Civil Service agencies in my last two years to finish my undergraduate college degree.

Combatting The White Male with a Gun Problem

In 2021 forty-five thousand people were killed with guns in America. This year in June 2022 there have been nineteen thousand deaths by guns. (Source: Congressman Marc DeSaulinier)

This was a problem I was flown to the East Coast by a federal government agent to research back in the early 1990’s. As a librarian with access to closed-to the-public databases, I was shocked to read that an employee of a the Los Angeles library was an enraged shooter who had been fired.

Flown home in the 1990’s  a couple of weeks later, I was stranded for hours in a San Francisco tower building at computer networking workshop as police turned off the electricity downtown while a disgrunted law firm client a block away in a tower building at 101 California Street shot several of the firms’ employees and then himself.

Since then, other than Diane Feinstein’s efforts in California, I’ve seen nothing of substance has been done by our politicians to really stop the stealing of other peoples’ lives by those ‘fragile’ white males.

BOOK REVIEW – In Barbara F. Walters New York Times Bestseller book, How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, she notes that when young white males are isolated and lose hope of having anything in their lives change, they turn to violence.

This leads to militias forming (exactly what the Second Amendment calls for. But this is a “WELL-REGULATED MILITIA”, not mobs trying to pull off bloody coups against our governments or a lone murderer with a AK-47 rifle shooting babies.)

Failed protests like January 6th are danger signs in democracies as are factions created by ethnic, geographic, or other fear-filled groups egged on by social media fake news that democracies are in danger.

In countries that do not respect democratic process of the peaceful passing of power or impair voting, there is also a higher rate of danger to a coup repeated.

I would remind us all that the educated white male Patriots on the East Coast of America in 1776 who conspired to free themselves from British rule were obviously not wanting to be ruled by a King or a Dictator or a Pope.

Government loan forgiveness training programs for young working class males, as well as older ones might give them hope for a better way to live and save their own lives — and those of others.

How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them —a short review

This is an eye-opening book. Barbara Walker has studied this subject for decades looking for the answers everywhere around the globe! That makes it a book some readers may not want to wade into the incredibly many conflicts everywhere on earth. So if that’s the case with you, and you are looking only for the U.S. part of it, you can find it a third of the way through the book. For me being older, it solved a lot questions about the conflicts and coups and wars I’ve lived through. Read it if you can during this period of time Don’t wait until it’s too late!