Listening to federal economists and the president, whose job evaluations are based on a growing economy, the economy is not embroiled in a recession.  They quote arcane figures and ratios like GDP, CPI, Jobless Claims, etc.  And they use these numbers to hide facts that are painfully obvious to all: our economic situation is dire.

Every citizen feels the pain of spending more dollars for every product or service he purchases.  The cost of filling your car with gas takes at least 50% more dollars than it did three years ago.  Same, or worse, with groceries to feed your family.  It is obvious and painful that citizens have to expend more dollars for the same product or service.

That is the definition of inflation.  So no matter what the federal economists say about CPI, we are feeling the pain of a dollar that buys less than it did before.  Devaluation of the dollar is the cause of price inflation.

Inflation, dollar devaluation, wouldn’t matter if our income went up at the same rate.  But income, our salaries, has not kept pace.  It can’t if your employer’s business is to remain viable.  Ergo, we spend more dollars for every essential, but our income remains stagnant.  We are being squeezed.

Consider the dichotomy between what we hear on the news and know in our purse.  It benefits the government employee to paint a rosy picture of the economy because the government’s actions caused the pain of inflation we feel.  Their actions devalued the dollar’s buying power.

The past three presidents allowed the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department to print 8 trillion U.S. dollars.  In and of itself, that printing devalues every other dollar in circulation.  That devalues the dollar’s purchasing power and leads to price inflation.

That was terrible in itself, but they did so much worse.

In order to print all those U.S. dollars, the government (Federal Reserve) issued federal debt, Treasury Bonds.  That debt repayment falls on every citizen, not the government.  So federal action devalued every dollar we own, and then our government put all of us into debt.  Citizens get to pay this debt off with dollars that are worth less due to inflation.

It gets worse.

The Federal Reserve printed those U.S. dollars so that Congress and the president could spend them on government programs like welfare, entitlements, COVID relief, the military, and infrastructure.  Some federal expenditures are worthy; most are not.  Some government programs work; most do not.

Regardless, every citizen working in the private economy for non-government businesses has suffered tremendously so that our government could spend money it doesn’t have by putting every citizen into debt, unto perpetuity, thereby increasing the size, scope, and power of government over us.

Economic analyst Peter St Onge puts it succinctly: “essentially, [GDP is measuring] the pace at which we’re going Soviet, replacing private wealth with government waste.”  In his interpretation of the data, we are destroying wealth at the fastest rate since 2008.

The point I’m trying to make is that despite what these government minions tell us, we know that our situation is getting worse.  Further, it is obvious that the entity entrusted to protect the citizen’s interests, our federal government, is not doing so; in fact, government spending and encroachment are harming us terribly.  Worse, they are enslaving our children and grandchildren by their central-control antics.

We all know that something is wrong.  But do you know that the same people who created our constitutional republic, anticipated these events?  Further, they provided the answers in three profound documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

The solution is that we citizens demand adherence to these documents by all elected and employed government workers.  This is the meaning of a representative government, a republic.  The citizen is responsible for his own freedom.  No politician will take on a reduction in federal spending by himself.  He will only when forced to do so by his constituents.  Us.

Our objective is simple: reduce the power of the central government by restricting its spending and our debt, reducing regulatory control (Chevron Deference), and understanding the complexities of our Constitution.

Our efforts today plant the seeds of the tree of freedom for our grandchildren.  We may not sit beneath that tree in our lifetime, but we can be certain that our progeny will.  Plant the seed.

Jay Davidson is founder and CEO of a commercial bank.  He is a student of the Austrian School of Economics and a dedicated capitalist.  He believes there is a direct connection joining individual rights and responsibility, our Constitution, capitalism, and the intent of our Creator.

Image via Picryl.