Inflation is Awesome and Shortages are Your Fault
How the media grooms us to love our deprivation
With price inflation becoming a daily reality around the world, the media wants you to know that everything is fine.
More than fine! In fact, as far back as April 2021, journalists have been reporting that there’s nothing to see here. Inflation concerns were overblown, based on scant evidence. It was just conservative scaremongering. Why, there were plenty of totally normal-priced organic items stocked at Whole Foods stores inside the Beltway! Whatever were the plain folk banging on about?
Then, sometime over the summer, it became clear that price inflation was, in fact, ramping up. Add to that supply chain and labor shortages, plus mass firings of unvaccinated employees, and general feelings of uncertainty regarding our recently and thoroughly buggered economy and social order, and the media was forced to change tack. Now it was, “Yes, there is inflation, but so what? It’s not that bad.” None of the pundits felt it was any great stretch to pay an extra few cents for their morning machiato.
And then the prices rose even more, even faster. Well, now a little re-education was called for. What the average consumer needs to know, the media explained, is that price inflation is awesome!
We are being groomed by the media to not only accept price inflation, but to embrace it.
Inflation, The Intercept points out, is actually a good thing. Because it means that you can pay your debt back in money that is worth less than it was when you borrowed it. In fact, they maintain, inflation represents a massive wealth transfer—from the 1% back to the working class! So cheer up, buttercup. Inflation is not only good for you, it’s a boon for class struggle and a blow against capitalism.
While it’s nice to hear the pundits pay heed to economic truths every once in awhile, keep in mind that they only do so in order to peddle economic insanity. Yes, it’s correct that debtors can benefit in this way from inflation, if wages increase in parallel with price inflation and if the economy is otherwise doing alright. The higher inflation goes, the less your money’s worth, but the principal amount on your mortgage and credit cards doesn’t change. It’s also true that during historical periods of high inflation, some new fortunes have been made and a lot of old wealth has been destroyed.
But for the average person, getting to pay back debts in devalued currency won’t save them from the hemorrhaging of money due to higher costs on goods and services. And what if wages don’t rise apace with inflation? Plus there are the secondary effects of a struggling economy: lay-offs, hours cuts, and increased taxes. (Oh, you thought the local government was going to honor pre-inflation currency values when assessing property tax valuations? Think again.)
And let’s not forget about 2021 inflation’s twin menace, supply shortages.
Shortages are annoying during normal times, but intensified, coupled with inflation, and drenched in unprecedented government overreach, they are downright scary. Instead of acknowledging that this is the stuff of nightmares and people have every reason to be concerned, some in the mainstream media have resorted to gaslighting.
“Lower your expectations,” the Washington Post advises. After all, what can we really expect in the wake of a Super Deadly Pandemic™️? Of course things are going to be tough for a while. Of course the shelves will be sparsely stocked. Of course you’re going to have to compromise on your Thanksgiving menu. It’s all because of COVID. Pay no attention to the economy meddlers behind the curtain. None of this has anything whatsoever to do with lockdowns, mandates, perverse economic incentives, or any other disastrous regulations. And let’s not even mention what people in less fortunate countries are going through.
The New York Times puts it less delicately: “Get used to it.”
So, are they saying that this is going to last a long time? Perhaps even indefinitely?
Yes. That is exactly what they’re saying. No end in sight. In fact, expect shortages to get worse.
Meanwhile, some journalists are blaming the problem of shortages on hoarders of food and essentials. Yes, that’s right. It isn’t that manufacturers are struggling to get the supplies they need to make their products. It’s not that shippers are having a harder time getting goods from the manufacturer to market. It has nothing to do with the fact that your local store is woefully understaffed. It’s your fault the economy is failing. You bought too many cans of beans. Shame on you!
But the headline from Business Insider, below, really takes the cake.
So Insider chartered a boat with a gaslighting expert to gaslight you into believing that port congestion is your fault.
To be fair, the headline is sensationalized. The article itself actually goes into many of the real reasons behind the shipping catastrophe—such as California’s new environmental regulations keeping truckers out of the state—and only dedicates a paragraph or two to the sins of greedy Americans. But what I can’t get over about this shining example of journalistic integrity is the irony of it.
We’re out here scavenging for baby diapers and trying to find chicken that costs less than $14 per pound, and Insider is chartering boats about it.
Since early on in the pandemic, people who have bills to pay and mouths to feed have been protesting the heavy-handed government response. And those who, for whatever unknown reason, don’t have to function in the real world—those whose paychecks come from the government, probably, those whose work is Zoom-able, and those whose jobs are recession proof—have been admonishing us to stop complaining and do what we’re told.
“You care more about the economy than you do about people!” they cry. “We can’t prioritize the economy over lives!”
Here’s the thing the lockdowners haven’t understood up to this point, but that they must come to grips with as reality comes crashing down: The economy is people. The economy is lives.
Markets are not light bulbs that you can switch off and expect to be working just fine when you switch them back on again. They are composed of countless individuals, performing countless tasks, calculations, and cooperations that can’t be fully quantified by any central authority. Countless decisions made by countless participants at the speed of human interaction. And each one of those participants is a fully fledged human being. Not a data point on a spreadsheet. An individual with needs, desires, responsibilities, and other people relying on them.
If you arbitrarily shut down one business, that negatively impacts the business owner, the employees, their families. How will they make a living now? But it doesn’t just stop there. It also has an effect on other businesses that contracted with the shut-down business. The accountant must find a new client to fill that vacant spot. The supplier must redirect its goods. The store that sold the shut-down company’s products must find something else to put on its shelves. And the shut down affects customers, who must spend time to find a new source for that company’s products, or go without. Each single business closure affects untold numbers of real, actual lives. Now multiply that across entire economies, and you get a chain reaction that could go on for months or even years.
As each day passes, more and more economic participants are feeling the pain of the policies that many of them lauded, believing it was “just temporary,” to avert utter disaster. Well, the real disaster is only just starting to hit.
We’ve fucked around, and we’re gonna find out.
But of course, everything is fine. What we are experiencing is all in line with what our betters have envisioned for our future. They chartered a boat to Technocratic Utopia and we all hopped aboard.
Your greed has caused the destruction of the planet and the end of human progress, so they say. And because of that, we’re all going to have to make a few sacrifices. And by we, we mean you. But in return, you’ll get a free sleeping pod, guaranteed free healthcare (as long as you submit to all medical treatments required by the corporate panopticon), and a free subscription for government toothpaste. So shut up and like it.
Or we could, you know, turn this ship around.
Our call.
Novel Update: Chapter 6 is undergoing formatting and will soon making its way to your inbox. Keep an eye out this week for the much-anticipated chapter that took me entirely too much time to write.
Thank you for reading!
Dystopian fiction isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but if it’s yours, I hope you’ll stick around. The easiest way to do that is to subscribe to this newsletter for free. You’ll get fresh new Technate 2051 chapters in your inbox as soon as they’re ready, plus regular updates on my novel-ing process, and essays on real-world dystopia.
Have any friends who love dystopian fiction? If so, please consider sharing the first chapter with them!
And if you want to chat, send me a note at starrohara@substack.com