Talks about how magic money doesn’t exist but then printing out checks for everyone and it materially helping loads of people was definitely an Overton window shifter as well.

There are principles and a status quo, and it always stays the same… until it changes.

There was no magic money tree. It took a while for the effects to spread to the whole of the economy - perhaps because people were in lockdown and limited in their ability to spend money - but throughout the western world people's incomes have been dropping in real inflation-adjusted terms. There's no way that they couldn't; a large chunk of the economy was shut down and producing nothing, so there's just plain less stuff to buy which means people can't possibly be able to continue consuming the same amount. Printing and handing out checks just redistributed where in society the economic pain was felt for a while.

$2000 one time checks are not what is causing inflation. Extended unemployment insurance... I doubt it.

Inflation right now is happening because logistics are messed up. Yeah, turns out that when things get messy then the price of things go up, cuz it's harder to get things done.

It had more to do with the hundreds of billions of loans to rich people to keep companies open. That don't have to be repaid. And went predominantly to fraud.

I really hope the DoJ sets up a task force and starts sending people to jail. We can let out some people who smoked dope if we need more cells.

Ah yes. I suppose you still believe in Powell's story that inflation is transitory. Forget about the money supply or the sudden course correction to hike interest rates faster.

You’re way understating things. It was an injection of hundreds of billions of cash into the economy.

The initial bailouts were something like over $10,000 per every American.

So if magic money exists... what's stopping us from printing out 100x the amount of money? Why not continue this policy indefinitely?

It's because our own political apparatus is not that different from the Chinese one. We just like to pretend we still have a choice with our "democratic vote".

You won't be able to dismantle it or even to reduce the huge amount of money it consumes.

You won't be able to escape its rules. We should be thankful we're still able to leave for the least worse country.

The real disease is called statalism and we're seeing the symptoms of that.

In WW2 we had Lord Haw-Haw (the defector William Joyce). He is mocked in Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" as the deranged voice yelling from the ruins

"The Statue of Liberty is kaput".

That's disconcerting.

I can't prove I'm not Chinese propaganda but I'm torn between China having bought our politicians or just our politicians doing their thing, trying to gradually accumulate more power and money over 200 years. Probably both, considering China got wealthy relatively recently.

> it’s easier to discuss when it happens to another country with an entirely different social system.

I'd say it's actually harder, because one cannot compare like for like. But of course that shouldn't discourage one from careful analysis.

> I was surprised, last year, that techniques we were condescending about, and saying it only happens in China, were applied in Europe and USA.

I think those making condescending remarks about China were not realists, and perhaps a little racist. Of course similar authoritarian responses were applied around the globe, some less heavily handed than others, and some with better results than others. And in some places there was a liberal response that put choice and civic responsibility into the hands of citizens, again some with tragic outcomes, and some with joyful results. Quite a mixed bag.

> As if it was an emergent property of a human group facing a new disease.

It certainly is. I think the results surrounding disgust and disease that Jordan Peterson and his group of researchers talk about , as well as the theories of Adorno etc on the "authoritarian mind" should now be checked against data we have from the pandemic. There will surely be xome confirmations and surpises.