Cutting Back

Rational people and institutions respond to things they cannot afford by finding alternatives - sometimes those alternatives are not buying them at all.

America’s technocratic elites enacted a response to the pandemic that really wasn’t with coerced programs of social distancing, isolation, and masking and vaccine mandates that did not work, but served to severely damage the economy. They followed that up by “electing” Joe Biden to return “normalcy” but received an economic philosophy built upon policies that had nothing to do with the economy, but everything to do with foisting progressive wet dreams on every American.

Spoiler alert – the policies achieved the exact opposite of what the Biden technocrats and social engineers promised, often intentionally – the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” fueled inflation because the spending it mandated had nothing to do with reducing inflation. This policy was a stealth attempt to implement an environmental fever dream of every true progressive, a baby Green New Deal, which achieved nothing other than setting billions of borrowed and taxpayer dollars on fire.

The result was like FDR’s response to the Great Depression – it has been credibly argued by economists that FDR’s statist approach extended the Great Depression – and my belief is that future studies will show that Biden’s reaction to the global supply chain disruption hamstrung the recovery of the American economy. Both FDR and Biden would have done well to let the economy recover on its own.

As a result of inflation heating up to record levels and the money supply being increased beyond reason, an environment of “faux prosperity” was created. People had more money that bought less. While the regime crowed about improving metrics (which always seemed to be revised in the wrong way a few months after they were released), people living in the real world were steadily losing purchasing power, paying $3.65 for eggs they paid a $1.41 before the pandemic – and eggs were not the only things that cost much more, just about everything does.

The Biden lackeys ridiculed people who complained about things they were struggling to afford or had to stop purchasing due to the Bidenflation brought about by Bidenomics. “It’s working!” these minions shouted from the rooftops – but it wasn’t working and it never worked. People had to make choices about what they could now afford and change their behaviors to match current economic reality.

That’s what happens in the real world when such situations arise. When Netflix raises prices higher than people can afford, they drop their subscriptions. People choose store brands instead of the name brands and they sort out things they can live without to conserve cash to cover basic needs.

I have written a few times over the years about Thorstein Veblen, the economist and sociologist, who made observations about social class in the late nineteenth century and his idea that there is a “leisure class” that holds “luxury beliefs” – things the “leisure class” – affluent people – use to display their membership in the upper class. “Luxury belief” is not Veblen’s term, this is a neologism coined by Rob Henderson in 2019 to describe ideas that confer status on upper-class people but harm the marginalized. It has also become a term to describe beliefs and behaviors that can only exist and be sustained during times of prosperity, because they are not necessary for everyday living.

What we are witnessing is the recognition that “woke” ideology and the policies that follow are luxury beliefs that societies around the world can no longer afford. As a result, dismantling of “woke” favorites - DEI, racialism, ESG, and the pushes for collectivism are getting cancelled - even the Deep State is taking some hits (with more to come in the next four years).

Many corporations are dumping ESG and DEI programs. Colleges and universities are disbanding their DEI departments and firing their heads of “diversity.” I just read an article about New Zealand and their spending priorities. The Land of the Kiwi became a woke kingdom under PM Jacinda Ardern, but it was just reported that “the country’s center-right coalition government said it would divert half of the NZ$75 million Marsden Fund, the nation’s sole funding source for fundamental science, to “research with economic benefits.” Moreover, the fund would no longer support any social sciences and humanities research, and the expert panels considering these proposals would be disbanded.”

Entire countries, their people, and governments, are beginning to recognize that “woke” is a luxury that is no longer affordable.

President Trump rode a wave his team saw coming and if the Democrats saw it, they chose exactly the wrong way to respond to it.

And it is an exceptionally good thing for America that 47-Elect and his team made the call to hang ten.