Darrell Castle talks about the announced plan of Kamala Harris to "fix" the American economy along with a discussion of that most undemocratic of institutions, the Democrat Party.

Transcription / Notes

THE HARRIS PLAN TO “FIX” THE ECONOMY

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday, the 23rd day of August in the year of our Lord 2024. I will be talking about the announced plan of Kamala Harris to “fix” the American economy along with a discussion of that most undemocratic of institutions, the Democrat Party.

Why do I refer to the Democrat Party as undemocratic. There are many reasons but primarily that Party seems to regard the will of the people as nothing but a nuisance to keep the ruling elite of the Party from having their way. For example, Hillary Clinton received more primary delegates than Barack Obama but he was nominated because he had more “super delegates.” The current nominees, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz received no delegate votes at all, not a single vote but they have the nomination and not Joe Biden who received 14 million primary votes.

Far a perfect explanation of American politics, and the entire election process I turn to the incomparable H.L. Mencken:

“The state—or, to make matters more concrete, the government—consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods.”

I search in vain for a finer explanation of the American political system and American politicians than Mencken’s, but what of Kamala Harris and her solutions to our troubles. I will focus my attention right here at home for now because we have so many issues and despite the dangerous climb up the escalation ladder abroad, I look inward for today. Home where our families live and home where we struggle to feed them in spite of various government decisions which try to keep us from doing so. Inflation is obviously a problem right now and Kamala Harris wants us to know that she is aware of it and intends to fix it. Her solutions are even more interesting since she is now vice president and has been in that office while inflation was embedding itself in the economy.

 The consumer price index has charts available that tell us what inflation is and how it affects our daily lives and our ability to maintain our standard of living. When we notice, little by little, that our living standard is slipping away the information from the consumer price index tells us at least partially, why that is true. For example, a U.S. dollar from 1971 is equivalent to $7.77 in 2024 an increase of 677%. So, the real value, or purchasing value of a dollar decreases over time. Does your income increase correspondingly because if not then your standard of living is declining. In some areas of the country, Ms. Harris’s California for example, the change has been even more pronounced. Politicians such as Kamala Harris will try just about anything to solve the problem of inflation except the only solution that will actually work. The only solution is cut public spending drastically or raise taxes drastically or both but those things will not buy very many votes.

The great economist Milton Friedman famously put it like this, in his dictum, “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary problem.” In other words, if you’ve got inflation as we have today, you are printing too much money. Who wants to live within their means in this day and age of empire and entitlement. We want to run the world and we want to stay in pow...