Hospitals constantly play games with every person & every entity they encounter, but there’s a reason for it that doesn’t originate with them — it’s a societal problem.

They overbill everybody for egregious charges. They say they do so in order to stay profitable & to collect a reasonable fee from insurance companies, but the insurers know what to pay for every item & service, and jacking that cost up is a ridiculous game. The problem is, when someone comes in who has a large deductible or no insurance, they get jacked also, and they can’t afford it. I’ve seen charges of $350 for Tylenol. Not a bottle, which costs less than $10, I’m talking 1 pill for $350. If hospitals can’t make money with reasonable fees, it’s time to discuss what it will take to get them to break even, and it’s time we took the profit out of primary healthcare and require all hospitals to be non-profit, and we can do that by not paying them enough money to make them profitable enough to be a private enterprise. All hospitals should be owned by the individual states, as it’s presumable they would get better results than being owned by the Feds or for-profit corporations. Social Security, Medicare and any gov’t agency including the military, police & fire depts everywhere are all forms of socialism, so why not bring socialism to hospitals?

Hospitals should bill the state for any charges not paid by insurance or the patient, then the state can use its powers to collect the bill. I believe people who don’t have insurance should be denied service regardless of the emergency, as they made a choice to not get insured like everyone else & therefore not pay their fair share into the healthcare system, but the costs attributed to treating them should not be borne by the hospital as they put it back on insurers & those who are insured, and ultimately, it’s insured people like you & I who pay the bill for those who refuse to insure & pay.

Hospitals that are losing money should be shut down rather than propped up by gov’t funding unless their service is crucial to the community; i.e., the community can’t do without it as there aren’t enough other hospitals or beds to provide adequate services. The target is 3 beds per 1,000 people, but the current USA average is 2.35 per 1,000. Some communities have less, and some need more due to the age of the population, so you need closer to 5 beds per 1,000 people in FL, AZ & CA where most people retire & live longer.

Rockledge Hospital near Cocoa Beach, Fl was recently shut down, and that was a good move as it wasn’t needed in the community. There are plenty of other hospitals within a short drive to cover the gap.

Glenn County, CA is about to lose its only hospital soon. That is one hospital that needs & should get gov’t funding to stay open, but they should be billing the state for uninsured claims & collections & let the state chase people down with governmental power to collect.

Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, AL is losing $5 million a month. Montgomery has 2 other hospitals in that city with 668 beds total and there are 3 more smaller hospitals in the metro area. With appx 888 beds for a metro population of appx 375,000 people, that means it has appx 2.37 beds per 1,000. This is a hair above the national average of 2.35 per 1,000 without Jackson Hospital being open. The $60 million needed by Jackson annually which they’re seeking from the gov’t to break even could be better spent by gov’t loans to enlarge & modernize hospitals already open that are not losing money by loaning it to them on no-interest loans so taxpayers get paid back.

Rural hospitals everywhere are in danger of failing due to financial losses, understaffing, and lack of equipment/services/beds. This is due to the point made earlier that many people, especially the poor & rural/ignorant part of our society won’t procure health insurance or pay their medical bills, which is a conscious decision they made. Being poor & rural/ignorant is also a conscious decision, so why give them a pass when the rest of us are getting college degrees, working in skilled labor positions otherwise, and paying for our health insurance & our medical & other bills?

i don’t agree with what Charlie Kirk said when it comes to his religion-based theories/thinking, although much of his theories of our societal problems and their cause & effect were spot-on, but nobody in the world should be killed for their words & thoughts as he was. Neither should anyone be canceled, silenced or boycotted over their speech. Free speech is what makes America great and what it is — liberty.

Lately, Jimmy Kimmel has gotten caught up in the issue as he was suppressed by ABC & threatened by the FCC for his comment, which I’ve heard and is simply a confusing & bad setup to a video that poked fun at Trump and really had nothing to do with a personal view of Kirk or his assassin. There was nothing he said that should have gotten anybody upset if they truly understood what he said, and it didn’t merit silencing him by his own platform. There’s nobody out there, Kimmel included, who believes Kirk’s assassin was a MAGA supporter, as the overwhelming evidence is that he’s a liberal LGBT member. Even so, Kimmel has the right to say it if he thought the assassin was a MAGA supporter, which he doesn’t.

Kirk is not the first and probably won’t be the last to be martyred for his speech, but we can hope this marks a turning point, pun intended, as violence against those we disagree with has to stop now. Look at all those who were killed before him, such as JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Gandhi, and all the political assassinations & attempts worldwide, including Julius Caesar. This has been going on for many millennia especially within religion.

People have been raised to believe that winning is everything and to not accept compromise or other’s people’s POV as it shows weakness, and to go along with the crowd groupthink & participate in the echo chamber, never revealing your real thoughts. This is a bully pulpit POV that’s being taught to most kids today. This culture of domination and pack mentality will destroy our society eventually, and it usurps a basic fundamental right all Americans have — to speak & be different. Just look at the congressional gridlock & partisanship we experienced over the last 30 years to see that people aren’t willing to compromise anymore, which is necessary for a society to live in peace & harmony.

We all have a right to live in peace & quiet, in harmony with civilization & its inhabitants, to pursue a legal income, to have a family & friends, and to have an opinion even it if it’s not popular. To shut people down who think differently than you is not the American way. We’ve fought wars against countries whose leaders & population thought it was good to suppress speech & oppress parts of society, if not all of it. That’s what Putin is doing right now in 2025 Russia. Shutting down speech that you don’t agree with is fascism & dictatorial. You’re suppressing the people’s right to liberty that is baked into our Constitution.

One big problem is that people are labeling speech they don’t like or that upsets them or opposes them as being “hate speech”, which is ridiculous, but even if it were true, hate speech is also protected by our Constitution as well. You can say that you hate Jews, as many liberals and college kids are now doing simply because it’s fashionable, without knowing the Palestinians and their platform that they’re advocating for or understanding why Israel is doing when they’re doing, and yet it’s protected speech.

People think liberals are new to the assassination game, but they’re been the main actors in political assassination for a long time. The assassins of Lincoln, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt’s attempted assassin, and Caesar’s assassins were all liberals or communists, and JFK’s assassin also if you believe Lee Harvey Oswald did it (I don’t). England had an uprising in the 1640s & hung their king, which was done by what were essentially liberals before those ideals were formally created. The French Revolution was essentially liberal and a forerunner of socialism.

James Garfield’s assassin was an anarchist/communist, but more of a right-wing fascist than anything. He was the first of the right-wing assassins, and it wasn’t until JFK that right-wing assassins outside of the civil rights movement became plentiful, if you believe right-wing warmongers were responsible for JFK’s murder as I do. Right-wing assassination came in strong after that with even more civil rights murders, plus the murders of the aforementioned in the 1st paragraph.

It all boils down to people allowing others to dissent with their beliefs & engaging them in debate rather than shutting them down.

Do you run across this intro to a conversation or engagement or are an unwitting party to it?:

Person #1: How are you?

Person #2 (or you): I’m good, how are you?

Person: #1: I’m good

Then they start talking. This usually happens with customer service personnel who are usually instructed to greet people like this to dupe them into thinking they really care about them & their lives, which is how this whole stupid exchange started — just to fool you into thinking you matter, and you fell for it. People are so naive & narcissistic that they believe their feelings matter to other people, when they don’t even really matter to themselves — they just think they do. Most feelings are self-indulgent crap.

When I’m asked something inane as a greeting or otherwise by someone I don’t know, like “How are you?”, “How’s your day?”, “Are you doing Ok?” or “How have you been doing today?”. I simply respond with “Hello”. If they ask me again, I then say “I said “hello”, did you not hear me?” if I’m really not in the mood, or I’ll say “I’d tell you if I thought you really cared how I’m doing instead of it being a corporate instruction to ask me.” Sometimes I simply ignore them. I’m secretly hoping they’ll realize that it’s a stupid game they’re playing.

We don’t need to care or ask how other people are doing whom we don’t know. About 3 million Americans die every year, about 1 in 100, and we don’t cry or even care that people we don’t know died, so why should we care how they’re doing today?

We need to go back to “hi”, “hey” & “hello” as the only acceptable greetings, but I can live with a wordy “good morning/afternoon/evening”. I can live with a “How’s it hanging” as long as the person asking is a straight guy, because it’s an invitation to a sexual encounter otherwise. Also don’t mind “What’s up” or “What’s happening”, even the goofy 70s sitcom of the latter.

The SJW Woke mob is going after every icon that doesn’t suit them, and it’s mainly going after sections of our society where things have been appropriated by a stronger group from a lesser group. In some cases, they’re right, but they’ve let the power go to their head & now they’re lashing out at things that shouldn’t be attacked by them.

They attacked the ban against gay marriage, and that made plenty of sense from a human POV & a legal stance. Denying LGBT the right to enjoy the same marriage that straight people do is a violation of a basic human need, and a violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. They were on the right side of history in that fight.

That was one of the few victories, but they’re put together a long string of losing positions since. Lately they’ve advocated for Gaza against Israel, and attack Jews for defending their country & way of life, and even attack American Jews for voicing support for Israel. That’s essentially the way Hitler started his persecution of Jews 90 years ago. They apparently don’t realize that Hamas & the PLO hate LGBT and would kill them if they came to their country. They kill women who dare to remove their beekeeper outfit, much less advocate for women’s rights.

So where are they when it comes to white musicians who appropriated the Blues to make billions? White people have no business playing the Blues mainly because they don’t get the blues, they give them. This is a historical fact. If they have the Blues, it’s not because of oppression; it’s because of their own stupidly poor life decisions.

People like Eric Clapton, Joe Bonamassa, the Allman Bros, The Beatles, The Yardbirds, The Stones, and virtually all of Classic Rock/Pop from 1955 thru 1990 used the Blues as a foundation for their sound and made billions. Some of them outright stole Blues songs & didn’t give credit to the artists who created it. Led Zeppelin lost a number of copyright claims to Blues artists over their songs which in many cases is the same exact song with a different name & played louder & faster, even with most of the original lyrics. Brian Wilson essentially took the song “Sweet Little Sixteen” by Chuck Berry & added new lyrics & created “Surfin’ USA”. Chuck found out & sued him for royalties & a credit & he won.

How about The Blues Brothers? I can’t imagine them getting away with that in today’s climate. It would go about as badly as a band of white guys dressing up like American Indians, or playing Blues while wearing blackface.

Back in the 50s, many black artists were bilked out of their royalties by poor contracts they signed where they essentially gave away the rights for a pittance. This sort of thing continued for decades by record companies, agents & publishers against musicians of all races who signed bad contracts without legal representation. Even the band Eagles knew they had a problem in the early 70s when their band manager & record company were the same person, which is a serious conflict of interest. It’s like suing a person and hiring his twin brother as your lawyer.

Where is the Woke Police over all this? Much of Classic Rock/Pop wouldn’t exist if not for the Blues artists of decades earlier laying the foundation and getting no credit.

I’ve read many of John “Duke” Wayne’s statements & watched interviews with him, and I have little problem with his position or his statements, especially when viewed from a 1971 lens. If you twist his words & conjure up alternative meanings to them, you can somewhat make a case against him, but you’d have to use those same arguments against everyone & we’d all fail at some point in the past, present, and possibly the future.

Duke didn’t believe in giving jobs to black actors or crew members unless they earned it on merit, but he had the same policy with white actors & all other races. In other words, he was against DEI & Affirmative Action, which are both racist programs in that they prefer that minorities get selected regardless of merit. Even Jerry Seinfeld is against this practice of including minorities simply as a matter of policy if they don’t merit inclusion. Seinfeld has famously (and correctly) said many times that all that matters is being funny, not your race, gender or background.

Ignoring someone’s color is what we’re all supposed to do, but DEI & Affirmative Action teach the opposite. Black people as a race have been given all the tools to get ahead in life over the last 60 years, and it’s helped some, but many have taken advantage of it in a poor way. Welfare programs have destroyed black culture (and society as a whole) for the last 60 years which can easily be proven by statistics, which also includes families with single mothers who have more babies to get more benefits, whose kids grow up without a father in the household, who fail in school, run amok & engage in teenage violent crime. However, civil rights laws have helped blacks to overcome oppression & gain legal equality to get ahead as a society. DEI & Affirmative Action destroy society by giving preference to those who haven’t earned it, and it makes society weaker as whole.

Duke said that he didn’t think blacks should be given power until they earned the right to wield it properly. This statement appears bigoted viewed from our POV in 2025, but in 1971, the black community was still in its infancy in using their newfound basic rights & learning how to cope with them & societal leadership without oppression. I also think it was a heavy-handed statement from a 2025 POV, but not so much from a 1971 POV.

It’s also important to note that mainstream white society held the same opinions that Duke held, as that’s where we were as a society then, and Duke wasn’t an outlier. Just 8 years earlier, George Wallace stood in a schoolhouse door in Alabama, and just 3 years LATER, Boston (not the Deep South, but the northern cradle of our nation) was the scene of a lot of anti-desegregation fights over busing. Looking at how public schools have deteriorated since forced desegregation, it’s easy to argue that the downfall of public schools was desegregation, or at least the catalyst, but there are many reasons why public schooling failed simply beyond blaming desegregation.

From a racial standpoint, it’s important to note that Duke was married 3 times, all to non-white wives. You can say that this was a Latina fetish, but you can’t say he was racist in his personal life.

Duke’s position on American Indians and our allegedly stealing America from them is rational & makes perfect sense historically & in practice. The correct way to address them is American Indians, not Indigenous People or Native Americans, as nobody was ever native or indigenous to any continent except Africa. There’s no inherent right to land — land belongs to those who can take, hold & defend it as it has always been throughout history & which is being practiced even today in politics & in sovereignty. It’s why our military & gov’t agents are always on the lookout in protecting America. Ukraine is a prime 2025 example as is 2007 Soviet Georgia, 2003 Iraq & the Palestinian lands of Gaza & The West Bank over the last 80 years. All the wars worldwide further solidify this concept.

American Indians fought amongst each other for many centuries to determine who gets to live & where they can long before Europeans arrived. American Indians didn’t want European settlers living among them & refused to be peaceful about it. More white settlers were killed than American Indians before they were conquered & shipped to midwest reservations in order to detain them to keep settlers safe. Of course, the settlers now had all the resources to themselves, but to the victor go the spoils of war as it has in every instance worldwide where groups compete for land & power.

Howvever you feel now about Duke’s words, keep in mind that they were almost universally accepted in his time, so if you indict Duke, you have to indict all of earlier society for condoning it. Judging past societies by today’s standards will eventually include us in the dark side of history as future societies brand us as barbarians for very basic actions & principles that we accept now as being mainstream, like using toilet paper, eating high fat/sugar/sodium foods, drinking alcohol, sunbathing, believing in religion and much more that will eventually come to be taboo ideas/actions in the near future. Just look at what we can’t say & do now that we could just a decade or two ago.

If you want your kids to get ahead in this world, it’s pointless to teach them the antiquated things from generations past. Being talented, smart & compassionate only gets them so far, if anywhere at all anymore.

Look at all the people who are succeeding now simply because they’re popular, beautiful, tall or D: all of the above. The Kardashian/Jenner sisters have made a fortune simply due to their beauty, and their popularity for being beautiful. Not a shred of talent or genius in that bunch — just the new things required to achieve success, which is incredible beauty & popularity via social connections. Look at athletes who are taller, bigger & stronger, and who are paid millions due to it. And those born into a wealthy & popular family like the Kennedys.

But this is not justice. What about people who are smart, nice, compassionate, trustworthy, and hard workers, all of whom don’t have good looks, are fat, short, ugly, and not socially-connected/popular, nor lucky enough to be born into the right family in the right country? Through little work & effort, you too can be rich & famous if you happen to have been born beautiful, tall & to the right social group.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than Hollywood & music. There are a lot of actors & singers/rappers who have very little talent (or dubious talent) who have been very successful. Rappers (the dubious “talent”) who make hundreds of millions. Cute young actors who are A-list superstars. Singers who sound like everyone else & have little talent for it & have billions of streams.

The problem is not them, but our society that values shallow superficial visual traits over substance, and social connections over good ideas & hard work/effort. Even the people who are in charge now are all rich & beautiful people, and ruthless. It’s not a far cry from the Indian caste system or British & European royalty, and history has held them in a bad light after the common masses have had enough. Ask Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette, Czar Nicholas II & his family, and Britain’s King Charles I (from the 1600’s — today’s king is Charles III). You can only get away with that for so long before society cuts off your credit — or your head in regards to the aforementioned royalty. Actually, the Czar’s family was shot to death — they didn’t waste time looking for a chopping block.

I love tearing down B.S., like how people think Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground, Oasis, Radiohead, KISS or The Ramones are great. KISS has a few gems, but they’re essentially good club musicians at best.  Although The Beatles were great composers of the ultimate Pop music of our lifetimes & created a number of different genres, they weren’t incredibly proficient virtuoso musicians or singers; just mainly pioneers of an artform & basically musical content creators, so to speak. Speaking of overrated . . . 

Kris Kristofferson was an overrated songwriter. He wrote about a half-dozen hits, but so have plenty of other songwriters, and there are hundreds of songwriters who have more hits than that. His only real lasting contributions were introducing what was then known as hillbilly vulgarity to his songs & the long hair/beard outlaw image to Country, which he stole from The Beatles like everyone else did, and Kris was the 1st Outlaw Country singer – he grew his beard & hair out in 1971, then Waylon in 72, Willie in 73 & Tompall in 74 – Merle waited until 82.

He patronized the hillbilly core of Country fans & used his good looks, ingenious guile & 6′-0″ frame to trick the Nashville music industry into liking him, as he knew better to do otherwise due to his excellent education as a Rhodes Scholar & teacher at the Army’s West Point Military Academy, as Southerners typically don’t like smart people.  He was a fraternity brother & an exception athlete, fer crissakes! When you realize the guy singing those shitkicking songs has this type of background, it’s impossible to take him seriously as a hillbilly singer. He was that era’s Larry the Cable Guy – a smart guy acting dumb to be accepted by the ignorant masses. He did such a good job at fooling everyone that they even let him sing when he couldn’t sing well at all. Autotune, had it been around at that time, would have said “I give up” & frozen up. He was actually a better actor than anything because that’s essentially what he was doing from the beginning.

He was also very good at making friends & social networking as he had a lot of influential friends in the Country music business and eventually Hollywood, and when you get down to it, that’s what counts in our society — being liked & respected, not what you know or your talent level or how nice/compassionate you are towards others in our society. I have a whole other article on this I’m working on.

But what I do recognize and respect him for is that he always stood up for the underdog in many different fights and didn’t take the mainstream side of socio politics in Nashville, which was way more right-wing than it is now.

It’s hypocritical & intellectually dishonest for people to paint a nice picture of a US President’s tenure just because they’ve died when there was nothing nice about it. Let me remind you of how bad a president Jimmy Carter and blow up some of the myths that persists to this day:

1. Carter wasn’t actually a poor farmer or from a poor family. Jimmy was the son of a peanut farmer who had a 350-acre farm, which in today’s dollars is worth about $3 million assuming it’s irrigated land, which a farm typically would be if you want to farm it, and a typical peanut farm of this size has $500K in farm equipment, tools & a barn, plus a farm house worth $500K as most that size do. Jimmy essentially inherited that at age 29, and presumably had to give his mother a lifetime income in exchange for it, just a guess. It’s true that he had a learning curve & some bad luck initially, but a typical 350-acre peanut farmer would net about $250K per year now, which is really good money. They also owned a warehouse and a store that made even more money, probably at least $100,000 more annually in today’s dollars. This puts them in the top 2%, i.e., 98 out of 100 American families make less money. This is nowhere near the definition of a poor family & would be considered upper level income.
2. He went to Georgia Tech for a year, which is still a good & somewhat difficult school to enter & learn, a school for engineering, then was admitted to the US Naval Academy. That’s not an easy feat to pull off, and even today, it’s only a 10% chance of getting in. Poor people typically don’t stand a chance of getting into one of the military academies — you need power & connections to pull it off, which only his dad would’ve had, so you can call that privilege.
3. Jimmy was a graduate of the Naval Academy & looked forward to a great future as Naval officer, but gave it away for a poor peanut farm on the verge of bankruptcy?? Of course not, he wasn’t that dumb. The farm was worth millions in today’s dollars and he knew he’d do better as a farmer than as a soldier, and I’m sure he didn’t like working with nuclear disasters as he did for a living (Google that).
4. He canceled the USA’s participation in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. There were 458 USA athletes who had spent their entire lives working to shine at the Olympics, especially the last 4 years prior to it, and they wound up with nothing to show for it. There are athletes who may have been among the world’s greatest ever who went nowhere as a result. Read this article to learn more: https://sports.yahoo.com/ghost-olympians-the-saga-of-the-us-boycott-of-the-1980-olympics-123315039.html. Keep in mind Hitler had begun his persecution of Jews in 1935 & opened the 1st concentration camp in July 1936, but a month later, we still sent athletes to Berlin that summer to compete in the 1936 Summer Olympics. FDR didn’t stop that.
5. He nominated Paul Volcker as Fed Chairman, who then proceeded to stop inflation by any means necessary, even if he had to destroy the economy to do it, which he & the Fed did by jacking the Federal Funds rates up to as high as 20%, which culminated in the prime rate & mortgage rates above that level in 1980-81. It caused a prolonged recession which was still boiling over the whole time Reagan was president — he was reelected in 1984 even though the unemployment rate was almost 8%. Mortgage rates were at 10% as late as 1988. Just look at how the Fed handles inflation now as a more measured & reasonable response to protect the economy from a freefall.
6. His handling of the Iran Hostage Crisis was a primer on how NOT to handle it. First off, he should have detained the former Shah of Iran as a bargaining chip to get the hostages back, but he let him go in Nov 1979. Iran immediately said they would swap the hostages for the Shah, but Carter refused, so in essence, he thought the Shah was worth more than 52 Americans. He then does much of nothing for the next 6 months except futile efforts that obviously weren’t working instead of attacking Iran or tendering the Shah as he should have. Then he sends in an ill-prepared outfit to save the Americans that crash-landed in the desert, then 3 more months go by with absolutely nothing being done. Then in July 1980, the Shah died in Egypt, and then 2 more months go by with nothing, then Iran says in Sept 1980 that if we’ll give back the $32 billion of the Shah’s frozen money, we can have the hostages back, but Carter says no. He then does nothing for the next 4 months & Iran lets the hostages go right after Reagan is inaugurated just to show Carter what a chump he & his people were.
7. He gave the Panama Canal to Panama, even though we spent billions in today’s dollars to create it & lost hundreds of lives doing it.
8. In what was his most egregious act against humanity, he supported giving the corrupt right-wing military government of El Salvador millions of dollars which they used to support their death squads which killed upwards of 75,000 of its opponents. Reagan also continued this support, btw. Google Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero for more info.
   
   I’ll finish this later, out of time today. This list goes on & on & on like the Energizer Bunny.

I don’t like defending these crazy ignorant perps like Jordan Neely, but we live in a society of laws, and Daniel Penny broke the law as written, plain & simple.

Neely was unarmed, and every state requires deadly force to only be used when confronted with the same. Penny used unreasonable restrait by choking that nutbag Neely to death, and being a former Marine, they are taught that a chokehold could result in death, and he was also taught by the Marines how to restrain people without using deadly force with other holds. A Marine instructer testified that Penny misused the chokehold and caused the death of Neely.

Penny should have been convicted of 2nd Degree Manslaughter as that requires the defendant to have committed homicide via reckless actions without the intent to kill, and surely at least Criminal Negligent Homicide, which is a law that shouldn’t even be on the books, because if you killed someone due to negligence, then it’s 2nd Degree Manslaughter, and you shouldn’t be prosecuted if you killed someone by accident and you weren’t negligent, like if you were holding a gun that accidentally fired and it killed someone (think Alec Baldwin, though he wasn’t completely without blame in my opinion — read my other article on that), or if you backed up with your vehicle and you couldn’t see a toddler behind it in your backup camera or mirrors & killed it. I’d be surprised if the prosecution doesn’t appeal and win, which is necessary; otherwise we’ll have people getting choked out all over America for minor transgressions.

I’m surprised that anyone is having that much difficulty with inflation since most anyone with any intelligence has managed to either negotiate a raise to offset inflation, or has moved to a new higher-paying job. But if you’re one of those who’s struggling financially due to inflation, here’s where the blame lies . . .

When Covid hit in early 2020, Trump did nothing. Like Nero, he fiddled while America got burned by Covid. By the time anything was done, it was too late, and the route his adminstration took was to shut down businesses, which was the worst thing they could have ever done, second only to throwing billions of government money at it, another big reason why inflation occurred.

People used Covid, the resulting shutdowns & fear as an excuse to stop working. As the labor force contracted heavily, the manual labor needed to produce goods dried up, so companies had problems getting their goods to the marketplace, and the supply chain disruption helped to cause inflation. To get help, the companies started offering more & more money to get people to come to work, which also drove prices up. Over 4 years in, we’re still seeing shortages of grocery items due to lack of labor.

Here’s your flow chart of how we got here & who’s to blame:
> Covid hit in early 2020.
> Trump’s lack of response failed to stop or control it.
> Trump instituted shutdowns which encouraged people to stop working & going out.
> Prices rose as a result of lack of labor & scarcity of goods/services.
> Prices rose further due to the influx of gov’t money through Trump’s SBA programs.

Trumps name is all over the inflation we’re experiencing today. If your main concern right now in your choice for president is the economy & inflation, why vote for Trump when he caused it in the first place?

There are only a few ways to contain inflation, and one of them isn’t throwing more money into the economy to battle high prices as you only feed the inflationary monster, not slay it. Increasing wages & easy gov’t loans only added fuel to the fire. We can’t become a communist country & order companies to stop raising prices, but that would be a decent solution as most of the rise in prices is due to corporate greed pushing the envelope by increasing prices well beyond the rate of inflation. Some building products & food products have increased by double what they were before Covid; we’re talking about a 100% increase in prices when inflation has only increased prices overall since 2019 by just 15% over and above the nominal 1.5% increase we normally see annually.

Jimmy Carter’s adminstration saw interest rates as high as 18% in 1980 to try and stop inflation & it caused a recession that lasted over a decade that was only tempered by a rising stock & bond market. Today’s Fed did a much better job in raising the Federal Funds rates just enough to choke off inflation and is now in the process of easing, but it may take until the end of 2025 or into 2026 to see mortgage rates come back to the 5% to 6% range that historically has been a good range for sustainable economic growth without stifling or overstimulating it.