OPINION:
I have of late been searching my morning newspapers vigorously for the causes of and the cures for inflation. It seems to me that most people whom I know are well aware of what causes inflation and what might be the cure for it. The cause is too much money chasing too few products. The cure for it is to restrain the growth of the money supply.
The source of money is Washington, and so I would have thought that the man to take action against the money supply is President Biden. But he has already been consulted on the matter, and he says the inflation that is now devaluing the contents of our wallets was caused by former President Donald Trump. Well, maybe the present police action against the former president is meant to quell his contribution to inflation, but I doubt it.
Mr. Trump presided over an inflation rate of only 1.4%, which strikes me as a reasonable rate of inflation. Under Mr. Biden, the rate of inflation has averaged 6.2% for the last two years. No wonder his approval rating is below 40% in most polls. Thus, I kept searching for a newspaper that gives me the cause of inflation, and wham! I ran across the good old Washington Times of March 28, and there on the front page was an in-depth article by Dave Boyer on inflation.
Given that inflation inflames the minds of every Republican voter, every independent voter, and even many Democratic voters, one might think all the newspapers would be covering inflation and its causes, But no, the causes of inflation were left to The Times. Well, The Washington Times delivered.
Mr. Boyer did his subject justice. His research took him all the way back to the 1978 lecture that Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman delivered at Kansas State University that has, in this era of rampant inflation, become an internet classic. Friedman began by saying that “inflation is made in Washington because only Washington can create money.” What’s more, “it’s always and everywhere a result of too much money, of a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. Inflation in the United States is made in Washington and nowhere else.” What did I tell you?
I was not present when Friedman gave this lecture, though obviously, I was aware of it, as I was aware of most of his seminal findings. He was, in his day, one of the most original thinkers. He was not a comfortable lecturer to listen to, and he was known to disturb lazy minds.
Mr. Boyer reports Friedman’s closing observation in his lecture at Kansas State about inflation being produced by “too much government.” Mr. Boyer continued, Friedman’s “audience applauded.” But wait a minute! Mr. Boyer went on to note that “Friedman stopped the clapping.”
“He said everyone in the audience bore responsibility for Washington‘s addiction to spending.” He warned: “The reason why we have too much … spending and too much printing of money is because you people want it, you and I. … We’re citizens. We run this country. If Congress has been voting higher and higher spending, why? Because it has been politically profitable for them to do it.”
Yes, Friedman warned those in the audience that they were as guilty of creating inflation as the power wielders in Washington were because, year after year, they helped return the power wielders to power.
In Mr. Biden’s first year in office, people like me who believed in Milton Friedman’s free-market economics in 1978 watched the president heave trillions and trillions of dollars at the problems facing the country and were aghast. Yet few people spoke out against Mr. Biden and the Democrats.
Now we are facing the renewed pressure of inflation. Perhaps it is time to take seriously the economists led by Friedman who gave us our last round of sound economic growth with very little inflation. By now, Americans ought to agree that Mr. Trump’s inflation rate of 1.4% is healthier than Mr. Biden’s inflation fate of 6.2%. Alas, you will not find much encouragement in the morning newspapers unless you read the good old Washington Times.
Glory to Ukraine!
• R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. He is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and the author most recently of “The Death of Liberalism,” published by Thomas Nelson Inc. His memoirs, “How Do We Get Out of Here: Half a Century of Laughter and Mayhem at The American Spectator — From Bobby Kennedy to Donald J. Trump,” will be published by Post Hill Press in September and can be ordered online now from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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