TruthUncover

Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won't get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines. ---------------- The Consumer Price Index (CPI) tracks the cost of everyday items. It's jacked up a whopping 6.8 percent over the past year, the biggest increase in almost 40 years. Gas is up 51 percent, beef is up 20 percent, and furniture by 11 percent. This is making the nightly news sound a little too much like a rerun of That '70s Show, a sitcom set in a decade famous for ever-rising prices and useless "Whip Inflation Now" buttons that Gerald Ford tried to stick on everybody from running mate Bob Dole to former Beatle George Harrison. Back in the 1970s, Ford was better known for literally and figuratively stumbling than for his economic acumen, especially when it came to inflation, which soared into double digits shortly after he took office. Ford believed that the way to beat inflation was to browbeat companies into keeping prices down and Americans into becoming bargain hunters. He declared a war on high prices, referring to inflation as "domestic enemy number one." "I pledge to my fellow citizens that I will buy, when possible, only those products and services priced at or below present levels," promised Ford. Joe Biden is looking reminiscent of the 38th president, and not simply because he also has trouble with airplane steps. Biden, his advisers, and his champions in the press are ignoring the tough lessons of the past by downplaying inflation or bizarrely claiming it only freaks out rich people. Then there's leading Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), who seemed to be channeling Gerald Ford when she tweeted out that the reason "your Thanksgiving groceries cost more this year" was "because greedy corporations are charging Americans extra just to keep their stock prices high." Even worse, Biden and crew are delusionally pronouncing that we can tame inflation by pumping massive amounts of government money into the economy—a course of action that will almost certainly make everything more expensive. "What this package will do is lower some of the most important costs, what [families] pay for health care, for child care. It's anti-inflationary in that sense," said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in defense of the recently passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and promises of even-bigger bills related to the president's "Build Back Better" agenda. What Ford, Biden, Warren, and Yellen have in common is a failure to understand inflation's most important underlying cause, which the Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman was explaining with unique clarity back in the 1970s. "To understand the cause of inflation, you must understand that it is anywhere and everywhere a monetary phenomenon," said Friedman. Supply-chain issues and rising demand are factors too, but the biggest contributors come from the government and the Federal Reserve. We've seen absolutely massive increases in government spending over the past two years, which have been paid for by printing money and historic boosts in the money supply. When you print money it means that there are more dollars chasing basically the same amounts of goods and services, which causes prices to rise. In just the past three fiscal years, federal spending has swollen to nearly $7 trillion a year, up from about $4.4 trillion in fiscal year 2019. Spending was $6.6 trillion in 2020, and $6.8 trillion in 2021. Back in the '70s, Friedman likened the early stages of inflation to alcoholism. Politicians get to spend more money, tax revenues increase without passing new legislation, and some consumers feel like they are gaining purchasing power as their wages go up. "Inflation is just like alcoholism," he warned. "In both cases, when you start drinking or when you start printing too much money, the good effects come first and the bad effects come only later. That's why in both cases there's a strong temptation to overdo it, to drink too much and to print too much money." Here's a final insult: Even the price of booze is going up, so not only will we have more sorrows, it's going to cost us more to drown them.

Tursunay Ziyawudun is part of the Turkic ethnic group known as the Uyghurs. They are largely Muslims who mostly live in the northwest Chinese province of Xinjiang. There are about 12.8 million Uyghurs who live there, and human rights groups say that many have become victims of crimes against humanity at the hands of the Chinese government. China is guilty of committing "genocide" against the Uyghurs, according to a British tribunal. There are over 1 million Uyghurs in Chinese re-education camps, where many have reported sexual abuse and even forced sterilization. Ziyawudun says she spent 11 months in jail for no stated reason. She reports that she was sexually assaulted and tortured during that period. Communist Party officials have attributed their treatment of the Uyghurs to the fight against terrorism. In 2008, the region suffered multiple terrorist attacks linked to the East Turkestan independence movement, which is a faction within the Uyghur community that wants Xinjiang to separate from China and to form its own state. But Human Rights advocates say that terrorism is just an excuse. In reality, these advocates argue, the Chinese government has oppressed the Uyghurs as part of its push for radical conformity. Chinese officials describe the camps as focused on "re-education" and career training. In 2017, when the crackdown intensified, Uyghurs were targeted for wearing head scarfs, for abstaining from drinking alcohol, and for displaying "abnormal behavior" like purchasing dumbbells. Some attribute the Chinese government's push for conformity to capitalism, and to Beijing's desire to staff its factories, increase production, and surpass the U.S. on the global stage. But the Chinese Communist Party says its goal is to build a "Modern Socialist Country," not a capitalist one. Capitalism is about diversity and allowing citizens to prosper as individuals. It's the antithesis of coercion and uniformity. Most of the world's most successful companies were founded in the U.S. because of that freedom. Think Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Tesla, and Facebook, which is banned in China. China seeks to impose one identity, culture, and language on all of its 1.37 billion people, erasing that which does not conform. When command and control societies seek to impose uniformity—from the policies of Mao to those of Lenin and Stalin—those societies inevitably abuse human rights in the process. Ziyawudun says that she felt as if the Chinese government set out to eradicate her culture and ethnicity. The Chinese government has ever more sophisticated tools of surveillance at its disposal. And it allegedly provides local authorities with lists that detail how to identify extremists. In Ziyawudun's case, she says she was arrested when she returned to Xinjiang from Kazakhstan, where she had been living with her Khazak husband. She had come back to renew her visa. Ziyawudun says she was released after her husband advocated on her behalf. She made it to the U.S. in 2020 under the protection of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, an organization that seeks to promote the rights of the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims from Xinjiang. Although the U.S. has condemned the mistreatment of the Uyghurs, and government officials are boycotting the Beijing Olympics in protest, America has admitted zero new Uyghur refugees in the last two years. Welcoming foreigners like Ziyawudun is what has allowed the U.S. to avoid becoming a monoculture, and our diversity of thought and experience is the secret to the success of American capitalism. China's erasing of Uyghur culture and its efforts to surveil, imprison, and torture the Uyghur people in pursuit of becoming the leading global superpower isn't just morally abhorrent; it won't work.