August 23, 2024
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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 power and those things cost a lot of money. They cost a lot more than can be extracted from working people therefore the answer is not stopping spending, but it is obviously borrow more and print the payments.
These things, empire and entitlement, may seem reasonable at the moment, but in the long run we pay dearly for them. For example, the Covid stimulus checks we got of about $1200 provided some immediate relief for what the government was doing to us but in the long run we pay dearly for them in terms of how much more food and fuel cost today as a result. It must be terribly hard for politicians to think long term because long term thinking is hard and the solutions to problems caused by politicians are usually painful and difficult. You won’t persuade many to sell you their votes by promising to cut government spending.
The Vice President of the United States and potentially the future President of the United States has a plan for solving the problems that we, as working Americans, have. When I heard her first idea that she promises to do if elected I cringed because of the simple-minded stupidity of it. She said she would provide up to $25,000 in down payment support for hundreds of thousands of first-time home buyers. Notice that she said I will provide this money, or I will give this money so I thought that’s really nice of her and she must be a lot richer than I thought.
It turns out that her statement was unfortunately just a figure of speech because she will not be giving, but instead she will be stealing. Yes, she plans to steal this money from working Americans or add it to the already $35 trillion debt thus destroying the standard of living of our children and future generations. On an annual basis there are 1.8 million first-time homeowners in America. Using that figure would result in $45 billion in annual spending but I’m certain it would trigger a lot more applications than 1.8 million so the cost would be much higher. That’s not much I know, for people who give $120 billion to Ukraine, but still, it’s money the U.S. does not have.
I will give you just a few of my thoughts about this idea of hers or whoever thought it up. It does not result from simple-minded stupidity, but it is instead an obvious vote buying scheme. It’s a way of saying to her base, I know you are whores so I’m just curious, how much do you charge. It has no productivity attached, so zero benefit will be returned. It will, in turn, make homes more expensive so the average buyer now and in the future will be less likely to be able to afford a home. In other words, this idiotic idea will make the “housing crises” a lot worse, but it might buy enough votes to win and gain power. Finally, it would put a lot of people in homes who can’t afford to live in them thus sparking a mortgage foreclosure crisis that we saw with the Obama years. That’s why I suspect he probably thought it up.
That is unfortunately, not the only tried before, stupid idea that she has in store for us. She is going to “ban corporate price-gouging” at grocery stores. Yes, she resents the 1% to 2% profit in the food and grocery industry. She’s OK it seems, with the 10% to 15% profit in the defense industry. See folks the reason food costs 10% per cent more this year than last is not her administration’s idiotic, bumbling with the economy because it’s all those 1% to 2% margin grocery stores that are just price-gouging. She is going to use the most totalitarian method of good socialists everywhere to make this problem much worse and that is to tell grocery stores they can’t raise prices. So, if their suppliers raise their prices what is the store to do. Don’t worry about that because she has the answer. Just tell the suppliers they can’t raise their prices either and tell the transport people the same thing.
O.K. Madame President, what if the allowed prices are below the level of profitability for my business or what should I do if it cost me more to produce than I get from your prices. Well folks, anyone with a functioning brain and anyone who has even a modest understanding can see that this type of top-down control always results in disaster. She promises to do it joyfully though so at least we have her joyful cackle going for us. The bureaucrats in Washington are so much better at turning us into Venezuela, Cuba and other such places than actual producers could.
O.K. what else can she do to damage this country. How about a government home building program to put another nail in our coffin. Yes, she will build three million new housing units at a proposed cost of $40 billion. The cost would be worth it you see, because it would create a lot of shovel-ready jobs. Adding three million new government homes should bring down the cost of homes, especially if they are built in your neighborhood. It would bring down the cost of your home and that’s for sure, but I would wager that the chances of all the homes being built are close to zero.
So far, we have added $100 billion to the annual deficit and debt with zero benefit to the country or its people. The only result so far would be a probable food shortage and crises resulting and inflation being made much worse, not better. Can it get any worse than this, well yes it can, and we can depend on VP Harris to find that way. Once again, she said she proposes to give each newborn child $6000 to help end child poverty. What would be the best treatment for child poverty, lower inflation by reducing government spending and cutting unnecessary regulations so their parents can work to earn a living.
I’m always interested when I find one of the many forms of government hypocrisy. I’m going to give $6000 to each newborn implies that she thinks she actually has that authority, and with the office comes this vast pool of money she can do with as she chooses. The only reason more money isn’t “given” to people who vote for the giver is because of selfishness. We don’t have the money so that’s easy just add it to the debt but then you have the interest until the final demise of the nation the advent of which will be accelerated by the gift. Speaking of hypocrisy, she will give money to newborns while at the DNC there is a bus providing free abortions and free vasectomies.
This woman who wants to hold the office of President of the United States is clueless and that makes her even more dangerous than the not even sentient Joe Biden. When he was sentient, a long time ago, I doubt very much if he would have gone for such a destructive plan. This lady is proposing full-fledged tyrannical totalitarianism.
According to information released by the Harris-Walz campaign she doesn’t see it the same way I do. She will make tackling inflation a day one priority and she will outline her plan to lower costs for middle class families, take on and defeat corporate price gouging, and just simply lower costs for all Americans. The costs of all these giveaways, according to Ms. Harris, will be paid by taxes on the rich and powerful. She doesn’t say that those rich and powerful people are the very same elites who now control her and the Democrat Party and the tax system and policies of the nation.
Most likely, the costs will not be borne by the rich and powerful, but by us normal Americans since it will simply be added to the debt and eventually paid for by the people for whom she tells us she is doing it. So, I guess we already have on our books $35 trillion of vote buying and war making boondoggles and idiotic wasteful schemes so what is a few $100 billion more. The costs always end up on the least informed and least protected group and that is we the people.
To this extent each candidate is in on the rigging of the game and that is that neither will do the one thing that would help reduce costs for middle class families and that is cut back on government itself. Cut everything and eliminate a lot of things if you sincerely want to save this country for future generations. Instead, both of them propose new costly programs to expand its reach and intrusion into our lives.
In conclusion, what Ms. Harris seems intent on doing is setting racial and ethnic minorities along with Third World immigrants against the middle class of American society for the purpose of transferring a free and self-ruled country into a corporatist totalitarian left-wing globalist state. I’m sure she knows that if the nation does not continually inflate its currency thus devaluing its debt the interest on the debt could not reasonably be funded so as Mencken said it’s all lies and posturing fabricated to cover the Democrats real agenda.
Finally, folks these Democrats, now led by Kamala Harris, a simple-minded, inarticulate woman have grown so comfortable with lying that they have no problem with turning the American people out as whores selling their votes. They and the people have lost their way and have sunk into moral darkness so deep they can no longer see any way out.
At least that’s the way I see it,
Until next time folks,
This is Darrell Castle,
Thanks for listening.
Photo Credit: Malte Mueller | Getty Images