Stidmatt

Playing with this idea that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon… one would expect a very high correlation between the federal funds rate and the inflation rate. Also for shits and giggles let’s throw in the price of energy in the United States.

Here are my correlation coefficients:

and what if we put in a 6 month lag?

Now… I don’t want to be brash here… but when I see a correlation of 70%, I don’t immediately think it must be a causal relationship like Milton Friedman claims. I think such claims are wrong, and this data shows that inflation cannot be an inherently monetary phenomenon.

Source:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=VxU2

If you try to look at the arguments for Brexit for any length of time with any basic understanding of economics, it doesn’t take long to realize the problems with all of them. With Brexit in full force are starting to see a decrease in wages, an increase in inequality, and a loss of jobs to European Union member states. They still haven’t dealt with the really big problem of having an open border on Ireland between the UK and EU, which threatens to reopen the troubles as soon as they deal with it. The solution has been an effective internal border in the United Kingdom, which is something countries just love to have!

So the economic arguments are all stupid, they always have been, they always will be, and the proof of their foolishness is just growing by the day.

What about the “loss of foreign power” argument? Well, let’s take a look at the recognition of Kosovo in this lovely map from Wikipedia…

This is clearly complete bogus. Nothing about the European Union requires each member state to have the same foreign policy in regards to external relations except when it comes to things like trade where they need to have consensus for obvious reasons.

There is only one more argument in favor of Brexit:

I predict the UK will rejoin the European Union in 10 years.

When asking the question of which state parties are the most effective, one of the first questions I ask is how effective is the party at keeping control of a state. If this is how we define a political party to be effective, then the most effective parties are the ones who are able to maintain absolute control of state government for the longest period of time. We can define these parties as the most effective state parties in the party.

Using Wikipedia as our source, we can then derive a table of the most effective state parties, based on how long it has been since the minority party controlled each of several different offices. The most effective state party is then the one that has maintained absolute power the longest over the state government.

Some states can be immediately discounted because they have failed to maintain absolute control of the state’s government right now. These states are:

1. Alaska
2. Arizona
3. Florida
4. Georgia
5. Iowa
6. Kansas
7. Kentucky
8. Louisiana
9. Maine
10. Maryland
11. Massachusets
12. Michigan
13. Minnesota
14. Missouri
15. New Hampshire
16. North Carolina
17. Ohio
18. Oklahoma
19. Pennsylvania
20. Vermont
21. Virginia
22. West Virginia
23. Wisconsin

These 23 states can be considered swing states.

For the Democrats, the following table can then be derived

These are the most effective Democratic parties in the country, with California, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Rhode Island being the most effective. Which of these four is the best Democratic party can be debated, based on your values and how you measure “best”. But in my view, there is no question that the most effective Democratic party is one of these 4.

For the Republicans, the following:

The Republican Party of Utah has dominated the politics of that state more thoroughly and for a longer period of time than any other party in any other state, and Texas is a close second.

A big lesson from all of this is that pretty much every state can swing either way with enough campaigning and the right candidate.

Out of 50 states, 23 of them do not have one party completely dominating every political office.

13 states have Democrats dominate every aspect of state politics.

The other 13 states have Republicans dominate every aspect of state politics.

Out of the 26 states with total partisan control, 6 of those states have gained total party control since 2020. 17 states which saw a party gain and keep complete control since the 2010 midterms.

Only Texas, Utah, and Idaho have had one party dominate every aspect of political life since before the 2008 election.

The lesson of this is, no matter what state you live in, whether you are in the minority or the majority, no matter how daunting it may seem that the politics in your state are absolutely dominated by one party or another, things can always change. No party in any state has dominated every aspect of politics for more than 22 years. The majority of states (29 to be precise) have seen multiparty control since the 2020 election.

No state is guaranteed to have complete partisan control by one party or another.

With this knowledge, go vote now and be heard in this month’s election. Your vote counts.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states and individual pages for each state.

A common refrain among Democrats today is that “Ruth Bader Ginsburg should have resigned before Clinton lost, and that would have saved abortion.”

Let’s review this claim, by looking at different scenarios.

RBG retires early

If RBG retired before 2015, then Democrats could have replaced her with another Democrat. She could not have retired after 2015 successfully because McConnell successfully blocked every appointment Obama had a right to fill.

If RBG had retired before Republicans took the Senate in 2014 the Supreme Court and Trump still won then would have had the following makeup in 2020:

Liberal (4): Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan and Obama pick #3

Conservative (5): Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, Kavanaugh

Roe v Wade would still have been overturned.

We Vote for the Email lady

Hillary Clinton is elected, we do not take the Senate. Nothing else changes. What does the court look like in 2020:

Liberal (3): Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan

Conservative (4): Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kennedy

Roe v Wade would still have been overturned.

We Vote for the Email lady and elect a Democratic Senate

Liberal (5): Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, Scalia replacement, Ginsburg replacement

Conservative (4): Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kennedy

Roe v Wade would have been protected.

This is the only path we had for truly protecting Roe v Wade.

The way American politics works, you need to keep the Senate to decide who joins the federal bench. That’s just how the system is designed.

Democrats need to keep the Senate.

I was just thinking about a friend who had her identity stolen, and had no backup beyond her driver’s license which was the one document that had been stolen. If she had a passport, she would not have had her life ruined. It has cost her tens of thousands of dollars.

The average American makes $31,133 a year, or around $15.56 per hour if they work full time. The median earning of working people was $41,535 in 2020 or $20.77 per hour.

A passport costs $130, (plus $35 for the execution fee for new applicants) and a passport card costs $30. Both last for 10 years.

This means getting both a passport book and a passport card costs $195 for a new applicant. This adds up to $19.50 per year or $1.63 per month. 40 cents per week, 8 cents per day.

Having both means that when you apply for any job in the United States you just need to bring one of these two documents, which means that you still have your birth certificate, naturalization certificate (if applicable), marriage certificate (if applicable), driver’s license (most likely), and the one remaining document safe at home so you can still prove your identity if need be.

It also means that you will never have your identity fully stolen to the point where you won’t be able to prove who you are.

Is that worth 8 cents per day for you?

References:

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.pdf

Many in the economic center and economic right are claiming that the stimulus payments are the cause of the inflation we are seeing now.

One such article is in the latest Economist. It is a rather unusual article for the Economist because it doesn’t include any graphs.

What if we actually do some basic graphing and try to look at the data, taking samples in January 2021, June 2021, January 2022, and the latest report.

Inflation seems to start to take off after January 2021.

                             Seasonally adjusted changes from
                                          preceding month
                                                                          Un-
                                                                       adjusted
                                                                        12-mos.
                              Dec.  Jan.  Feb.  Mar.  Apr.  May   June   ended
                              2020  2021  2021  2021  2021  2021  2021   June
                                                                         2021

 All items..................    .2    .3    .4    .6    .8    .6    .9      5.4
  Food......................    .3    .1    .2    .1    .4    .4    .8      2.4
   Food at home.............    .3   -.1    .3    .1    .4    .4    .8       .9
   Food away from home (1)..    .4    .3    .1    .1    .3    .6    .7      4.2
  Energy....................   2.6   3.5   3.9   5.0   -.1    .0   1.5     24.5
   Energy commodities.......   5.1   7.3   6.6   8.9  -1.4   -.6   2.6     44.2
    Gasoline (all types)....   5.2   7.4   6.4   9.1  -1.4   -.7   2.5     45.1
    Fuel oil (1)............  10.2   5.4   9.9   3.2  -3.2   2.1   2.9     44.5
   Energy services..........    .2   -.3    .9    .6   1.5    .7    .2      6.3
    Electricity.............    .4   -.2    .7    .0   1.2    .3   -.3      3.8
    Utility (piped) gas
       service..............   -.4   -.4   1.6   2.5   2.4   1.7   1.7     15.6
  All items less food and
     energy.................    .0    .0    .1    .3    .9    .7    .9      4.5
   Commodities less food and
      energy commodities....    .1    .1   -.2    .1   2.0   1.8   2.2      8.7
    New vehicles............    .4   -.5    .0    .0    .5   1.6   2.0      5.3
    Used cars and trucks....   -.9   -.9   -.9    .5  10.0   7.3  10.5     45.2
    Apparel.................    .9   2.2   -.7   -.3    .3   1.2    .7      4.9
    Medical care
       commodities (1)......   -.2   -.1   -.7    .1    .6    .0   -.4     -2.2
   Services less energy
      services..............    .0    .0    .2    .4    .5    .4    .4      3.1
    Shelter.................    .1    .1    .2    .3    .4    .3    .5      2.6
    Transportation services    -.6   -.3   -.1   1.8   2.9   1.5   1.5     10.4
    Medical care services...   -.1    .5    .5    .1    .0   -.1    .0      1.0

Source: BLS

So from this data, we can see that inflation ending June 2021 peaked at 5.4%. The increase in prices was concentrated in energy and used cars and trucks.

Did people end up spending most of their stimulus checks on used cars and trucks? It doesn’t seem to be the case.

We see that there was an uptick in inflation for commodities less food and energy commodities, but by itself, it doesn’t explain the higher inflation rate, and its increase seems to be from inflation in the used car market.

The culprit of inflation in 2021 is clearly an increase in the price of fossil fuels.

Source: BLS

This data from the latest report (for August, September hasn’t been released yet) shows that energy has increased by 23.8% over the last year. Other items have increased in prices as well, but the bulk of our inflation woes comes from the increase in energy prices, and this has been true for two years now.

So unless if Americans simply took their stimulus checks and then just bought a ton of oil (which again, no one is reporting) it appears that the issue is from increase oil prices GLOBALLY.

Plus, the inflation rate has lasted for several years, as oil prices have continued to be high, not just in the United States, but also around the world.

The inflation rate is probably not from just the stimulus checks. It is due to our dependence on oil. It’s right there in the data. This global increase in the price of oil is also occuring as America produces more oil than it consumes.

Increasing domestic oil production will not save us from inflation.

Only moving to a diversified renewable energy system which is not only dependent on fossil fuels will save us from inflation rates like we have been seeing.

It is not from stimulus checks.