Doomed By Permanent Out Of Control Global Inflation

James M. Ridgway, Jr.
3 min readJun 16, 2022

--

Today, the FED raised interest rates 75 basis points, or in lay terms three quarters of one percent, to try and get a handle on out of control inflation. Setting Interest rates is one of the main tools that in past decades the Federal Reserve has used to balance employment and inflation, the ideal mandate of the Fed being to keep inflation low (preferably around 2%, though it is beyond my limited thinking why any degree of inflation would be considered a good thing) while maintaining full employment.

The world’s economies, however, are entering uncharted waters. Capitalism and an ever growing total world population are running headlong into the earth’s finite resources of water, minerals and useable land upon which to exist and grow food.

Basically capitalism requires endless expansion or it collapses. Thus on a finite planet as to space and natural resources there comes a point whereby the capitalist rubber-band must snap. I strongly suspect that we have reached the point where the byproducts of capitalism are eating the earths wondrous provisions faster than human creativity can overcome our negative, acquisitive offsets.

The globe is drowning in human, animal and industrial waste — global warming being one of the most serious byproducts of our capitalist driven excesses. This is not to say that capitalism was a bad economic concept, but rather that one can be done in by too much of a good thing as well as too bad. Increased droughts, floods and storms as a result of global warming will soon limit food production and everything else needed to sustain human life on earth. This will initially result in too many folks demanding too few goods, the very definition of inflation.

Now we all know that authoritarian governments like Putin’s Russia quickly become riddled with corruption and all the inefficiencies that eventuate because a nation’s riches are flowing to a privileged few insiders. What do you suppose is going to happen when the most economically and militarily powerful nation on earth — the Untied States of America — falls into an authoritarian state?

The GOP/MAGA boys have already said that they will soon gain control of our nation’s electoral machinery in a totally partisan way by 2022 whereby they will be empowered to pick and choose whomever they wish to fill the seats of power in America. The rule of law will then be cast aside and wealth will be passed to political cronies.

The corrupt Trump administration set the table for worldwide inflation on its first go round by playing footsie with Putin and his oligarchy pals and will surely finish us off with a second go round, starting in 2024, if democracy’s luck does finally run out.

Inflation is also a sort of game of musical chairs in which only the super wealthy and well connected can survive such economic strangulation. Indeed, the loss of democracy in America will set the world ablaze with an intensity of inflation that only the most aggressive and brutal among us will survive, that is if any of us at all manage to withstand the dog eat dog world of super inflation.

--

--

James M. Ridgway, Jr.

Jim Ridgway, Jr. military writer — author of the American Civil War classic, “Apprentice Killers: The War of Lincoln and Davis.” Christmas gift, yes!