Mark Twain once famously said, “Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” (North American Review, 1907).
In a series of posts, starting with the one below, I’ll substitute “statistics” by “democrats” in the U.S.; whence it’ll become transparent how the Democrat Party support their weak or utterly false claims by abusing data science, economics, physics, geoscience…and even common sense. They also rely on dubious “experts” to buttress their falsehoods. Every time you hear a Democrat speak, lurking nearby is the grinning ghost of Sir Robert Giffen, a Scottish Economist and Statistician, who in 1892 stated, “An old jest runs to the effect that there are three degrees of comparison among liars. There are liars, there are outrageous liars, and there are scientific experts.” There’s Joe B, Adam Schiff, and the entire left-wing media headed by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and her rowdy sisters on ABC’s The View. Or you could have as easily picked Obama and a whole bunch of other fakers from the Democrat crowd. They’d all fit swimmingly in Giffen’s description of the party of prevaricators.
Post 1: The Delusion of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)
Joe B’s chief economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, was recently caught with his (mental) knickers down in a documentary, Finding the Money, made by proponents of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)—a preposterous paradigm of economics practiced by the current administration.
What is MMT? Among the several senseless ideas buried in this so-called Theory, a key one involves a government’s budget deficit.
What is a government’s budget deficit? When its expenditures exceed its revenue, a country’s government winds up with a budget deficit.
Our grandparents and parents always advised us, “Don’t spend more than you make. You’ll go broke.” Easy-peasy, no?
Apparently not to the followers of MMT in the U.S. They actually argue that deficits don’t matter diddly-squat since the U.S. can borrow money in its own currency.
Don’t worry folks. Let me translate the italicized words above into simple English. Rich countries like the U.S. can print its own money whenever it wants. And so, the U.S. can splurge as much as it wants on all the crap the Democrats like to spend on: illegal immigrants, wars, socialized health care, canceling student loans, and on and on it goes. That’s it! No more deficits—we’ll just print our way out of it!
Thus, the two words, “print” and “spend”—intrinsic to the MMT—are behind Joe B’s failed economic policies. But there’s more.
And this is where Joe B’s chief economic adviser Jared Bernstein’s brilliance shines in the film! He says, “The U.S. government can’t go bankrupt, because we can print our own money.”
Apparently flummoxed, the interviewer blurts out, “Like you said, they print the dollar, so why does the government even borrow?”
Yeah. Duh!
I dare you to decipher Bernstein’s reply to the interviewer. And you thought Kamala Harris was the leader of the word salad in this administration.
“Again, some of this stuff gets – some of the language and concepts are just confusing. The government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money by selling bonds. Is that what they do? They sell bonds, yeah, they sell bonds. Right? Since they sell bonds, and people buy the bonds, and lend them the money.
“A lot of times, at least to my ear with MMT, the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to um, uh … I guess I’m just, I can’t really, I don’t get it, I don’t know what they’re talking about…It’s like, the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows, otherwise you wouldn’t be having this debt and deficit conversation. So, I don’t think there’s anything confusing there.”
Folks, did you get that? Sorry, but even yours truly cannot make sense out of that prattle.
Jared B, if the reporter’s question led you to that gobbledygook reply, try answering this: If the government can always print money, why does it need to tax anyone?
Gotcha!
There’s another obnoxious MMT economics principle paraded by this pseudo-Keynesian crowd. They say that the government can lead to full employment and, by some miracle, use taxes to bridle any inflation. Well then, try answering this, Jared B. Have you ever considered cutting the corporate tax rate to zero so we’ll almost surely get full employment which, in turn, will almost surely lower the cost of goods and services?
Gotcha!
What is inflation, Jared B? Based on your reply to the reporter, I figured you don’t know the answer. Let me educate you. The wealth of a country depends primarily on the goods and services it can create (manufacturing, farming, natural resources, etc.). But you and Joe B, predicated on the MMT, rely mainly on printing money—each dollar is created from nothing to support its purchasing power; i.e., the printed dollar has no intrinsic value. Over time, that leads to inflation—a loaf of bread, a liter of gas, a bottle of baby formula…cost more and more—until we’ll wind up like Venezuela where anarchism becomes the order of the day.
The worst example in the western hemisphere during the 20th century was Germany which indulged in recklessly printing the Deutsche Mark to pay off its debts; subsequently, it went bankrupt. Or how about the more recent debacles in Argentina and Zimbabwe?
Here’s a snapshot of how inflation has affected us since Joe B was elected, because of MMT and other imprudent ideas the Democrat Party is implementing. (The Biden Inflation Tracker)
Food Costs have increased by: Juices (23%), Dairy (23.2%), Lunchmeat (23.6%), Poultry (23.7%), Bread (25.1%), Fruits/Veggies (27%), Baby Food/Formula (27.8%), Eggs (35.1%) and Flour (37%).
Other Costs have increased by: Tires (19.6%), Airfare (21.5%), Propane (22.5%), Pet Food (24%), Used Vehicles (25.2%), Natural Gas (27%), Electricity (27.1%), Delivery Services (27.6%), Vehicle Repairs (35.4%), Gasoline (37.8%), Vehicle Insurance (41.7%), Leased Vehicles (42.2%), Diesel (55.8%) and Home Heating Oil (61.4%).
There’s a joke circulating on the web—Hunter Biden is pissed at his papa since the price of cocaine and hookers have also skyrocketed.
LIAR: In May 2024, Joe B had the nerve to tell CNN that when he took office inflation was at 9%; in fact, it was around 1.7%, and increased to 9.1% in June 2022. (Donald Trump’s son responds after Biden claims he inherited 9% inflation when he came into office) While COVID played a part, I’ll discuss in another post that this liar’s war on fossil fuels and obsession with printing money, from the very first day he took office, accelerated the problem.
OUTRAGEOUS LIARS: CNN and the other left-wing pundits, of course, didn’t challenge the Liar. By ignoring the lie, these “reporters” have promulgated the lie multifold—the conspiracy of silence.
Who is this bloke Jared Bernstein—chief economic adviser to Joe B?
Here are some highlights from Jared B’s CV.
- No background in Economics
- A bachelor’s degree in music from the Manhattan School of Music
- A master’s degree in social work from Hunter College
- A PhD in social work from Columbia University
- Lectured at several colleges, including Columbia and New York University
- Worked as an economist for the Department of Labor during the Clinton administration
- Held positions at liberal think tanks, such as the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- Chief Economist to vice-president Joe B under the Obama administration
How did a music major/social worker land the job of chief economic adviser to the U.S. president?
Nepotism (a.k.a. ass-licking)—the process by which socialist/Marxist/communist governments, and the modern-day U.S. Democrat party creates employment. The process fits in nicely with the MMT’s dictum of using the government to attain full employment.
p.s. There’s nothing “democratic” in the policies and practices of today’s democrats; on the contrary, under Joe B, it borders on fascism. Hence, it would be erroneous to call them the Democratic Party. Therefore, let’s label them the Democrat Party. The Merriam-Webster dictionary notes that, used as a noun, a democrat is one who practices/advocates social equality. That would explain the dangerous DEI movement backed by this group of people. Please see my posts on the harm DEI has done to the U.S.
