Trego's Mountain Ear

Javier Milei is known for improving Argentina’s economy by taking a chainsaw to the budget. The numbers coming out on defrauding government suggest that the US needs to take several dozen chainsaws to its budget.

We have a lot of spots in the US budget where money comes in by running the printing presses or borrowing. The government no longer balances the budget through taxes and tariffs – not to say that our Congresscritters are mentally capable of coming up with a budget, much less sticking to it. The massive amounts of fraud are just one spot where we can see how inflation costs us as fraudsters steal. We need to use everything from chainsaws to pocket knives to trim waste from the budget – and, since election to Congress seems to be a better path to riches than most forms of business or labor, we need to turn Congress over. The decision to vote for or against your congresscritter can be made on his/her/its present net worth today versus a couple to five years ago. If a congresscritter’s net worth has increased at a higher rate than Elon Musk’s you either have an extremely bright congresscritter or a crooked one. Nancy Pelosi’s stock picks seem to have worked out better than Warren Buffett’s. Is she brilliant or crooked? She’s not my congresscritter – but if she were, I’d be voting against her.

The dollar’s value against gold is a measurement – but not a direct measurement of inflation. The price of computers was much higher in the mid-eighties than today, and for less powerful machines. That’s counter-inflationary. Increasing government requirements on cars and pickups has been inflationary. Improved technology and developing new products – improved agricultural varieties, moving soybeans north – these are things that fight inflation. Most congresscritters fail to comprehend that running the presses and issuing bonds creates inflation, while the folks who raise two ears of corn in places where only one grew before, the folks who reduce the costs of cars and computers are the people who fight inflation.

We need to use both chainsaws and pocketknives to make a budget that strengthens the Yankee Dollar.