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Speaker 1: Can we record this episode? Sure, let's start. I'm sure,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure we could use some of that as the opening. Hi,

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Speaker 1: welcome to It could happen here the podcast that is

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Speaker 1: about medical ethics in the eighteen sixties, not today, but

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Speaker 1: fair Yeah, no to today today. It's it's me because

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Speaker 1: we're long and we're doing an episode about inflation and

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Speaker 1: speaking of medical ethics while speaking of kinks. Actually, the

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Speaker 1: moment I said that, I was like, I have opened

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Speaker 1: myself up for that was some of the broad side

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Speaker 1: that was from some of the first weird interport internet

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Speaker 1: porn I came apart. It was specifically the cast of

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Speaker 1: duck Tails being like, okay, let's get to the topic

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Speaker 1: of the episode. That is, this episode is now about

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Speaker 1: duck Tails, inflation, fetish pornography. That is enough pre rebel

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Speaker 1: CHRISTI for what do you have for us today? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so we're talking about inflation. Um, we're talking about economic inflation.

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Speaker 1: To be fair, this is somebody was making money off

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Speaker 1: of that inflation. I'll tell you that much. God. I

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Speaker 1: mean one thing, duck Tails actually does crossover because of

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Speaker 1: Scrooge McDuck and his giant and his giant. That's true,

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Speaker 1: and that actually it does. That's right, you can tell

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Speaker 1: you right now, that's not the only thing about him

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Speaker 1: that was inflated. Oh boy, talking about is dick. Okay,

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Speaker 1: let's let's keep it, keep it on tracked. Okay, So

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Speaker 1: all right, all right, if people are inflation, it's not good.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty high. It's I probably should have looked up

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Speaker 1: the inflation rate, isn't it, Like, yeah, I think it's

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Speaker 1: every it keeps going point six. Yeah. Yeah. But every

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Speaker 1: time someone says it's this or it's that, people are like,

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Speaker 1: well no, but they also change these these and these

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Speaker 1: indicators five years ago and these other ones ten years ago.

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Speaker 1: So really it would be this, and there's judging who's

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Speaker 1: securate about that? This? This is the thing. I didn't

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Speaker 1: put this in the episode, but there's a thing that

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Speaker 1: if you study economics you will realize pretty quickly is

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Speaker 1: that all of the like basically all of the aconstancy

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Speaker 1: so we have are fucking bullshit, and they're like are

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Speaker 1: basically they're they're they're really really fake, Like yeah, like

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Speaker 1: we we don't like one of one of the big

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Speaker 1: ones that you know, is like one of the underlying

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Speaker 1: things that makes all economics fake is that no one

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Speaker 1: knows how to actually calculate the value of of just

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Speaker 1: like a factory. Like like if if you have like

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Speaker 1: a bundle of goods, right, and they're not the same thing,

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Speaker 1: so I don't know, you have two factories they make

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Speaker 1: different things. Actually figuring out what the value of that

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Speaker 1: is is like fucking impossible, and the like the way

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Speaker 1: that it's done, and like if if you look at

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Speaker 1: like like there are these like the um producer statistical animals, right,

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Speaker 1: and the values that are in the like the un

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Speaker 1: ci people animals are literally them guessing because because the

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Speaker 1: thing is like the value depending on like the actual

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Speaker 1: value of the thing changes right depending on where it is,

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Speaker 1: unlike a supplied tomanker blah blah blah blah. And so

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Speaker 1: they literally just tell the people who are doing the

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Speaker 1: econometrics should just like pick a pick a random like

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Speaker 1: price that they that that they think is equilibrium. So

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Speaker 1: it's it's completely bullshit. It's it's it's bullshit, like literally

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Speaker 1: all the way down. It's nonsense. All of the indexes

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Speaker 1: are wrong. Uh yeah. Unfortunately the field of economics doesn't

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Speaker 1: really care about this that much, So we're gonna have

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Speaker 1: to sort of take them seriously. And the thing I

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Speaker 1: specifically want to talk about today was there was a

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Speaker 1: really interesting paper that was produced by two economists at

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Speaker 1: the DC Federal Reserve, M. David Rattner and J. Sim

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Speaker 1: about why inflation happens, which is called Who Killed the

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Speaker 1: Phillips Curve and Murder Mystery, and which we're talking about

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Speaker 1: this for two reasons. One uh, one because it's funny,

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Speaker 1: because I what is going to happen over the course

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Speaker 1: of this paper is that the Federal Reserve has combat

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Speaker 1: Federal Reserve has discovered Marxism, and they are going to

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Speaker 1: attempt to solve this mystery of inflation by by applying

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Speaker 1: by by by applying marks. And the second thing, the

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Speaker 1: second reason I want to talk about this is that

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Speaker 1: it reveals something that's very very important about the current

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Speaker 1: political situation, which is that both economists and like the

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Speaker 1: rest of the ruling class in general, do not understand

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Speaker 1: what inflation is or what they sort of unders that

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Speaker 1: kind of understand what it is. They don't know what

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Speaker 1: causes it um And before we go on here, I

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Speaker 1: should like explain what inflation is because most people I

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Speaker 1: don't know. The way I got talked about I talked

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Speaker 1: about about this with Garrison like a few days ago

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Speaker 1: about like like the way people get taught about inflation

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Speaker 1: is that inflation is when like your money is worth less. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: when when the government prints more money so to each

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Speaker 1: individual dollar is worth less because it's more of them circulating. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And and this is like this is this is propaganda. Um,

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Speaker 1: that is not what inflation is. Inflation is literally just

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Speaker 1: when prices go up. And if you think about it,

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Speaker 1: like okay, that that's kind of the same thing sort

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Speaker 1: of because if prices go up, like your your you know,

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Speaker 1: your your dollars are worth less money, right, But mostly

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Speaker 1: inflation isn't about the amount of money becoming less. Mostly

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Speaker 1: it's about something happens that that makes things cost more. Um.

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Speaker 1: And you know and and likely yeah, like the it

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Speaker 1: is possible for you to get inflation because the government

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Speaker 1: pretty too much money. But like mostly are like symbiotic, right,

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Speaker 1: government with your money because prices are going up so

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Speaker 1: that people need more money in circulation to buy things. Um.

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Speaker 1: You saw this happen a lot with the COVID pandemic. Um.

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Speaker 1: So it's it's that both these things kind of feed

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Speaker 1: off each other and contributing sort of. But but I

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Speaker 1: think something that's important to understand about this is that

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Speaker 1: if if you look into the actual econ stuff, like

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Speaker 1: the supply of money, like how much money there is

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Speaker 1: in the world, has very are a little do with inflation.

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Speaker 1: It only really has effects inflation when you're doing with

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Speaker 1: like I don't like nineteen thirties twenties Germany or like

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Speaker 1: China after World War Two, where just there's literally just

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Speaker 1: like you know, the government prints so much money that

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Speaker 1: like like my my I have my family has a

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Speaker 1: bunch of stories about like literally carrying out baskets full

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Speaker 1: of money in China to buy a train ticket because

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Speaker 1: like everybody knows about buy maur Germany too is like

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Speaker 1: the weird arrows full of cash and stuff. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: this stuff that's actually it's really rare, and it's like

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Speaker 1: the reason everyone knows. But when it happens is that

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Speaker 1: it's only happened. It's happened like four or five times,

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Speaker 1: and mostly that's not that's not what why inflation happens.

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Speaker 1: And if you look at inflation right now, for example,

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Speaker 1: there's the prices of like a whole bunch of stuff

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Speaker 1: from like food to like microprocessors are going up because

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Speaker 1: a it's harder to produce things because of COVID b

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Speaker 1: our supply chains are collapsing, and see because Russian invaded

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Speaker 1: Ukraine and like absolutely annihilated an enormous portion of the

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Speaker 1: global food supply. And this that stuff causes prices to

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Speaker 1: go up, right because now it's harder to make a thing,

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Speaker 1: and because it's harder to make the thing, that thing

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Speaker 1: costs more. And this has you know, this has literally

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Speaker 1: nothing to do with with the money supply, right, Like

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Speaker 1: it doesn't have anything to do with how much money

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Speaker 1: in a circulation. UM. And there's another reason that that

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Speaker 1: that will get into kind of at the end that

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Speaker 1: inflation happens that is not also has nothing to do

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Speaker 1: with money, which is that corporations just do price markups

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Speaker 1: because they know people will pay for it. And that's

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Speaker 1: that's happening to UM. But having an explanation of like

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Speaker 1: why inflation is happening is really really politically important, even

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Speaker 1: even if the explanation that you have is completely wrong.

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Speaker 1: It it allows you to do really powerful things politically.

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Speaker 1: On Like, one of the ways that neoliberalism sort of

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Speaker 1: took power is that in in in the in the

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Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, especially in sort of sort of the

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Speaker 1: the seventies in particular, both both in academia and a

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Speaker 1: sort of politics written large. There's this problem where you

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Speaker 1: have a bunch of these old Anes and economists who

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Speaker 1: are like Kensians are like they're big on like using

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Speaker 1: government spending to keep the economy running, and like you

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Speaker 1: get a lot of welfare programs. But yeah, it was like, okay,

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Speaker 1: you can avoid crises by having the government to spending.

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Speaker 1: But the problem is that like they couldn't explain why

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Speaker 1: inflation was happening in the seventies. Um, and this was

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Speaker 1: because the Kenyans working the Kensians are working out something

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Speaker 1: called the Phillips curve, and we have to do a

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Speaker 1: little bit of econ bullshit. But it's not that complicated.

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Speaker 1: I promise I survived it, so it'll be fine. So

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Speaker 1: the Phillips curve says that like the closer you get

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Speaker 1: to full employment, and like the lower the unemployment rate gets,

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Speaker 1: the higher inflation rgetts. And this this sort of really

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Speaker 1: starts to kick in around from like five percent unemployment

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Speaker 1: to like four percent to three percent unemployment. Uh, the

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Speaker 1: inflation rate like spikes. And you know the reason this

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Speaker 1: is supposed to happen is because the lower the lower

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Speaker 1: the unemployment rate is uh way you start to rise

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Speaker 1: because as there's lots of people who' unemployed, you have

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Speaker 1: to pay them more money to get them to work.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, so this is and and the theory behind this,

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Speaker 1: right is that like wages increasing is what is what

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Speaker 1: causes inflation happened because it makes everything costs more. Now

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Speaker 1: there's a simple one obvious this is like, this is

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Speaker 1: a very simple and obvious solutions. So the problem of

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Speaker 1: why like inflation happens, and like all simple and obvious solutions,

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Speaker 1: it is also wrong. The Philips curve does not explain inflation.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna refer everyone in the chat to

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Speaker 1: this tweet that I made, and I want you to

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Speaker 1: look at exhibit A, which is the Phillips curve, And

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Speaker 1: then I want you to look at exhibit B, which

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Speaker 1: is I actually plotted unemployment versus inflation in the US

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Speaker 1: from like nineteen until one. And I want to get

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Speaker 1: a description of what the second graph looks like, because

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Speaker 1: it's supposed to look like a curve. Well, so the

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Speaker 1: first the first graph we have we have an excite

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Speaker 1: an X Y graph of the Phillips curve, starting at

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Speaker 1: eight percent closer to the why access and then swooping

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Speaker 1: down and then flattening out at a percent on the

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Speaker 1: x axis for the unemployment rate versus the inflation right.

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Speaker 1: And then for the next graph we have, Um, what's

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Speaker 1: not a curve? What is instead inflation and unemployment graft? Um?

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Speaker 1: Except it's zig zagging everywhere like dark sides omega beams. Um,

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Speaker 1: it is not, in fact doing a curve. My my,

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Speaker 1: my favorite thing about this is that um, like multiple

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Speaker 1: multiple like, and this happens with both unemployment and inflation. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there are multiple unemployment rates that are associated with different

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Speaker 1: inflation rates, and multiple inflation rates that that are all

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Speaker 1: that that generate two different rates of unemployments. It's incredible.

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Speaker 1: It is it is, it is, it is a it

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Speaker 1: is an is an absolute sort of monument to how

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Speaker 1: much the stuff doesn't work. And there's a really good

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Speaker 1: reply to your graft tweet that says economists of the

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Speaker 1: modern day court astrologers it's basically true, like, which is funny,

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Speaker 1: I mean astrologers, though we're probably right. More often that's

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Speaker 1: true well, I mean they're simply guessing is it a

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Speaker 1: good idea to invade this country or not? Fifty odds

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Speaker 1: it works out for you, right if you're if you're

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Speaker 1: trying to predict, like I don't know, the SNP five,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot more variables. Yeah, And and this is

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Speaker 1: this is one of the things that like, okay, if

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Speaker 1: if you can be the person who like walks into

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Speaker 1: a lecture and goes the emperor has no clothes, you

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Speaker 1: can like attain immediate ultimate power. Because again this stuff

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Speaker 1: is like so it's so it's so trivially and easily

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Speaker 1: like falsifiable that like I you know, like built in

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Speaker 1: Friedman is able to do this. And you know, okay,

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Speaker 1: so I actually abut the false curve, the Phillips curve

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Speaker 1: that like I showed you that it's like a curve.

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Speaker 1: It's like a very simple one. There's all of these

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Speaker 1: really convoluted like modifications to it. Um. There's you know,

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Speaker 1: if you look like the new the New Kings in

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Speaker 1: Phillips curve or whatever they they've done, they've got a

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Speaker 1: bunch of math to it to try to like make

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Speaker 1: it kind of work. Um. The problem is that it

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Speaker 1: doesn't work. Uh, there's there there's a there's another Phillips

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Speaker 1: curve that's been that was like modified. But then Neil

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Speaker 1: By the new classical economists and the new classical economists

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Speaker 1: were like, this thing doesn't work. Okay, here's some modifications

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Speaker 1: you have to put in, but that curve also doesn't work. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and you know, and this is a real problem, right

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Speaker 1: because Okay, so if if if this inflation explanation of

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Speaker 1: why inflation happens doesn't work, like what is actually happening. Um.

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Speaker 1: Milton Friedman, who sort of like takes the the economic

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Speaker 1: scene by storm by like predicting a lot of the

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Speaker 1: inflation in the seventies and like sort of having an

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Speaker 1: answer to it. Is his his argument is that inflation

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Speaker 1: is they print too much money and there's inflate And

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Speaker 1: this is kind of a gross oversimplification of of what

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Speaker 1: his actual point is. But it's it's it's it's more

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Speaker 1: true than any of like Freedman's over simplifications. So I'm

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Speaker 1: just I'm just gonna believe it at that. And this

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Speaker 1: is what the Federal Reserve and like pull Volker used

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Speaker 1: to try to try to fight inflation nineteen seventy nine,

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Speaker 1: he Volker does. She just tries to massively reduce the

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Speaker 1: money supply. The problem is that this didn't work. Like

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Speaker 1: inflation in like inflation is still like above campertime. I

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Speaker 1: think it's bikes to like like fifteen percent or something

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Speaker 1: like into like nineteen four so and and just based

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Speaker 1: on how much larger Huey, Dewey and Louis got sometimes

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Speaker 1: two or three. Do you know who else wants? Oh boy,

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Speaker 1: that's right, Garrison. All of our sponsors are into duck

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Speaker 1: Tails inflation fetish pornography. This is it could happen here

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Speaker 1: a podcast sponsored by the concept of masturbating to the

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Speaker 1: cast of duck Tails getting inflated by bicycle pumps. Oh

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Speaker 1: we're back. Well I've done my part. Yeah, so okay,

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Speaker 1: So so we're left off. Right, There's there's a bunch

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Speaker 1: of inflation happening. Some of it is happening to Ducktail's characters,

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Speaker 1: most of it is happening to the economy. Uh. Paul

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Speaker 1: Volker has tried to stop the inflation by like making

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Speaker 1: there be less money, and this has done nothing other

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Speaker 1: than like dramatically increasing unemployment rate. Now, the problem with again,

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Speaker 1: Freedman sort of explanation of of of inflation is that

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Speaker 1: inflation persistence of the eighties and it only stops after

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Speaker 1: insert foreshadowing noise here. Uh, Reagan crushes the unions, and

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Speaker 1: we will come back to is to solve inflation, we

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Speaker 1: should stop all unions. That is your official position. No wow, okay,

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Speaker 1: but this, this is this is part of the position

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Speaker 1: of the of the Marxist federal reserves. So we will

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Speaker 1: we will get there a second. So alright, alright, So,

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Speaker 1: so the thing I've been describing that that freeman is

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Speaker 1: pushing about the money's way, this is called monitorism, and

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Speaker 1: monitorism is like the fakest theory of inflation, like it's

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Speaker 1: it's a it's a theory of inflation so fake that

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Speaker 1: like even other like even other like neo classical economists

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Speaker 1: don't accept it, like none of the other different neoliberal

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Speaker 1: schools of economics, like every single one of them look

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Speaker 1: at this and was like this is nonsense, Like what

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Speaker 1: what are you doing? But you know, so okay. So

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Speaker 1: that though, it's like it's like the TikTok astrology compared

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Speaker 1: to the neoliberal court astrology. Yeah, it's it's it's all.

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Speaker 1: It's like it's it's it's somehow an even faker explanation

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Speaker 1: of this. But you know this, this brings us back

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Speaker 1: to like where we started, which is that like, okay,

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Speaker 1: so if the monitorist stuff doesn't work, and the Phillips

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Speaker 1: curve also doesn't work, Uh, what is causing inflation? And

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Speaker 1: the answer from inside of the like the actual field

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Speaker 1: of economics is that nobody knows. Um. Here's Daniel k Rollo,

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Speaker 1: who was the former Federal resent who was a former

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Speaker 1: Federal Reserve Bank governor, and was a member of the

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Speaker 1: Federal Reserve Board. So he's a he's a very very

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Speaker 1: high ranking like guy inside the sphere of people who

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Speaker 1: try to apply econ ship and uh, here's here's the

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Speaker 1: quote that he gave about it. In quote, the substantive

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Speaker 1: point is that we do not at present have a

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Speaker 1: theory of inflation dynamics that works sufficiently well to be

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Speaker 1: of use for the business of real time monetary policy making.

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Speaker 1: So what are he's saying there is like if you

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Speaker 1: translate that out of econs because you don't even really

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Speaker 1: have to translate that out of econs much. What he's

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Speaker 1: saying is that he no one has any idea why

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Speaker 1: inflation works, and none on the models work well enough

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Speaker 1: to let you like try to deal with inflation if

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Speaker 1: you're you know, the people who control the money supply,

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Speaker 1: like the Fed. Now economists like we we we've seen

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Speaker 1: in the past, if you've been following this stuff in

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Speaker 1: the past like ten years issue, especially in the last five,

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Speaker 1: economists have been getting like increasingly desperate to explain what

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Speaker 1: the fund is happening, and they're getting increasingly increasingly desperate

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Speaker 1: right now because you know, hey, inflation is back, and

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Speaker 1: that that brings us to the paper I mentioned at

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Speaker 1: the top of the episode, which who Who killed the

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Speaker 1: Phillips Curve? And Murder Mystery, which opens talking about two

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Speaker 1: sort of massive recent failures of the like new Keynsie

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Speaker 1: and we fixed we we we added variables to the

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Speaker 1: Phillips curve until it like sort of kind of works

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Speaker 1: ish maybe, But you know, the only thing they're talking

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Speaker 1: about two of its sort of like incredibly massive failures.

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Speaker 1: The first is in two thousand eight, where there's you know,

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Speaker 1: there's a recession. Oh really, what happened economically? There's a recession.

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Speaker 1: But what's interesting about this, right is that, Okay, so

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Speaker 1: if you think about this, there's an inflation is there's

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Speaker 1: a recession, unemployment skyrockets, this should cause deflation. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: because you know what happened to us in eight the

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Speaker 1: official Duct Hills video game came out. So I think

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Speaker 1: this could we are through the looking glass people, you know,

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Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is this is not any

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Speaker 1: more bullshit than any of the other stuff they're doing.

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Speaker 1: So like, but you know, okay, but there's there's this

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Speaker 1: there's this thing that happens. We're like, okay, the like

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Speaker 1: the inflation that the inflation rate should have been decreasing

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Speaker 1: and it just stays the same. And economists are like

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Speaker 1: what And this is this is called the missing deflationary period.

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Speaker 1: There's there's a second thing where d dren this sort

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Speaker 1: of like quote unquote economic recovery and the last like

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Speaker 1: ten years ish until basically until before the pandemic, employment

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Speaker 1: rates dropped really really low, and this should have started,

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Speaker 1: this should have triggered inflation, but it doesn't. And you know, okay,

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Speaker 1: And so the people who run the Philip Philip script,

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Speaker 1: like the economist are looking at this and they're like, okay,

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Speaker 1: what do we do? And the fed economist solution is

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Speaker 1: again and I share you not Marxism, and more specifically,

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Speaker 1: the solution is neo Marxism. Yeah, yeah, this is this

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Speaker 1: is this is this is something else I'm sort of

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Speaker 1: excited about, which is that I finally get to tell

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Speaker 1: the world what a neo Marxist is, because this is

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Speaker 1: technically a thing. It's just that none of the people

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Speaker 1: who talked about neo Marxists have any idea what it is.

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Speaker 1: The most modern neo marxis actually really well, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I guess you could have okay, what what what? Once

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Speaker 1: we explain it, I will, I will talk about how

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Speaker 1: you could theoretically have a post modern neon Marxist. But

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Speaker 1: I don't think I ever met whoa how welcome Welltory terms? Okay, okay,

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Speaker 1: so I'm excited to hear this. Yeah yeah, all right.

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Speaker 1: So what what is happening here is that there's an

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Speaker 1: old joke in Marxist circles that like, the most advanced

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Speaker 1: Bushwire economist is fifty years behind the most vulgar Marxist.

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Speaker 1: And this is this coming true. Uh, the Federal Reserve

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Speaker 1: economists are developing, they're trying to make a new Phillips curve,

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Speaker 1: and the new Phillips curve is what they call it

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Speaker 1: Collecki and Phillips curve because it's based for the guys

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Speaker 1: new curve just drops. Yeah, it literally is except this

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Speaker 1: this this is this is this is the neo Marxist curve.

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Speaker 1: And it's based on the works it's kind of loosely

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Speaker 1: based on him, but it's just based on the work

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Speaker 1: of a Polish Marxist economist named Mikail Collecki and Clucky

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Speaker 1: is a he's a very very weird Marxist, like by

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Speaker 1: Marxist standards, is extremely weird. And to explain why this is,

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Speaker 1: we we have to we have to speed We're gonna

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Speaker 1: have to speed run Marxism one oh one. So I'm

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Speaker 1: going to attempt to explain Marxism in one page. All right,

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Speaker 1: let's okay, okay, Mark Mark Marxism one oh one. Right.

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Speaker 1: You have a worker. She has to go find a

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Speaker 1: job and sell her labor to like get food to eat,

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Speaker 1: because otherwise you can't support herself. Um, so she goes

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Speaker 1: to work at a factory that makes like hospital stretchers.

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Speaker 1: Now under capitalism, and this is this is this is

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Speaker 1: this is one thing I'm explaining. This is this is

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Speaker 1: like the this is the orthodox Marxist interpretation. So the

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Speaker 1: people who are about to scream at me for a

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Speaker 1: million years about how this is wrong, I'm explaining the

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Speaker 1: orthodox position. Damnit, uh Marxism here? Yeah? No, okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Chris quick, question what what? What? What? What was Marx?

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Speaker 1: So Marx was a experiment in psychological experiment run by

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Speaker 1: the by Harvard University was concluded in but he wrote,

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Speaker 1: he wrote a bunch of books. And one of those

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Speaker 1: books is Capital, and and it in capital. So okay,

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Speaker 1: so you have you have your worker, right, and she

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Speaker 1: she she works to make hospital stretchers. And the thing

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Speaker 1: that makes the hospital stretcher have value is the amount

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Speaker 1: of time that it takes a worker to make it.

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Speaker 1: So under under this, this sort of understanding of what

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Speaker 1: Marxism is, value is just labor time. Right, The value

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Speaker 1: of an object is how many hours of work it

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Speaker 1: takes to make a thing. Now this labor time or

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Speaker 1: you know, like and like, how how long it takes

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Speaker 1: to make the thing? Uh, The value of it it

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Speaker 1: isn't measured by like how long it takes aim like

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Speaker 1: an individual cot, right, It's measured by like how long

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Speaker 1: on average it takes society to make. So you know,

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Speaker 1: for example, like you said, this is in Finland, right,

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Speaker 1: it's based on how long on average it takes to

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Speaker 1: make a hospital stretcher in Finland, not like you know,

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Speaker 1: how long it takes to make him like Olivia or something. Um.

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Speaker 1: And this is the technical term for the for like

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Speaker 1: this thing is is socially necessary labor time. UM. So,

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Speaker 1: our worker like works for through her day and after

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Speaker 1: six hours, she's produced enough value to support herself. She

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Speaker 1: can buy food, she can pay her rent, she can

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Speaker 1: like I don't know if you buy a car or something.

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Speaker 1: But she still also worked two more hours of the

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Speaker 1: day and during that time, the labor that she's doing

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Speaker 1: just goes to the boss. And this is called this

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Speaker 1: is called surplus value, like the amount of time that

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Speaker 1: you're working where you're working for the boss and not

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Speaker 1: to like support yourself. Uh. This this, this is called

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Speaker 1: surplus value. It is the objective route of exploitation and Marxism.

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Speaker 1: I yeah, it's it's it's it's it's the value that

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Speaker 1: goes directly to your boss. That and the reason that

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Speaker 1: like your boss can just steal this from muse because

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Speaker 1: they have the factor and you don't. So if you

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Speaker 1: want to produce something for them to survive, you have

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Speaker 1: to go to him and that this is This is

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Speaker 1: called the ownership of the means of production. Now, the

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Speaker 1: price in theory of of this hospital structure, right is

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Speaker 1: based value on its value or how many hours it

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Speaker 1: takes to produce it. Um and how precisely you get

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Speaker 1: from dollars as a unit of measurement from two dollars

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Speaker 1: from time is a subject of an absolutely interminable debate

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Speaker 1: called the transformation problem. If you want to go read

428
00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:20,359
Speaker 1: more about it. I have wasted probably four years of

429
00:23:20,400 --> 00:23:23,200
Speaker 1: my life reading about it. I don't recommend it, but

430
00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:26,240
Speaker 1: the answer is you can sort of kind of get

431
00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:28,600
Speaker 1: it to work if you funk with the numbers a lot. Uh.

432
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:30,720
Speaker 1: But it's if you do what's unclear if they mean anything.

433
00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:33,120
Speaker 1: You can also bypass it entirely by arguing that only

434
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:34,960
Speaker 1: works in the level of the entire world economy. Blah blah,

435
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:37,000
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. I don't care. If you do care

436
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:39,800
Speaker 1: about this, don't yell at me. Go read chapter six

437
00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:43,760
Speaker 1: of Bickler and Needson's Capitalist power Palmatics. Theory is critique

438
00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:47,359
Speaker 1: Fred Moseley's money in totality and Killman and mcglare is

439
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:51,199
Speaker 1: a temporal, single system interpretation of Marks's theory of value.

440
00:23:51,600 --> 00:23:58,080
Speaker 1: Marks's value theory, and then Google Ducktails go big genuine

441
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:00,760
Speaker 1: and then all of that, all of your notes on

442
00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:04,159
Speaker 1: both the texts and the duck tails send all that

443
00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:07,960
Speaker 1: to I Wright okay on Twitter, um, and they to

444
00:24:08,440 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 1: please you. You will probably come out of like you

445
00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:13,680
Speaker 1: will come out of the duck Hill stuff like more

446
00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:16,440
Speaker 1: saying than you will doing the Marxism stuff. So yeah,

447
00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:19,600
Speaker 1: but I've I've now covered my basis. H this is

448
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:21,639
Speaker 1: this is this is orthodox Marxism, which is the stuff

449
00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:24,120
Speaker 1: we've been talking about is based on another There's another

450
00:24:24,119 --> 00:24:26,560
Speaker 1: assumption here that's important kind of technically, which is that,

451
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:29,840
Speaker 1: like so orthodox Marks assumed that, like, so, you have

452
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:31,399
Speaker 1: a bunch of sectors of the economy, right, there are

453
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:34,200
Speaker 1: people who like make different stuff, and the assumption to

454
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:37,720
Speaker 1: do who make hospital gurneys, people who do more important

455
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 1: work like make podcasts. Yeah, yeah, and and everything in between.

456
00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:43,320
Speaker 1: And the assumption is that, Okay, so you have a

457
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:45,800
Speaker 1: person who makes like podcasts, right, and then and the

458
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:47,960
Speaker 1: other people who make hospital structors figured out that making

459
00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:50,679
Speaker 1: podcast is more profitable than making hospital stretchers, so they

460
00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:53,400
Speaker 1: start moving all their capital into making podcasts. But then

461
00:24:53,600 --> 00:24:56,360
Speaker 1: because there's too many podcasts, the rate of profit goes down,

462
00:24:56,359 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: and eventually, like eventually the rate of profit across also

463
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 1: actors is supposed to equalize. Yes, yeah, so and and

464
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:08,879
Speaker 1: this means that, like in the combination of this and

465
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:11,359
Speaker 1: competition means that prices is supposed to tend towards value

466
00:25:11,560 --> 00:25:14,560
Speaker 1: or like the how much something cost in money is

467
00:25:14,560 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 1: supposed to tend towards the labor time socially necessary to

468
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:20,960
Speaker 1: produce a commodity in a given place. Um, this is

469
00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:23,439
Speaker 1: like the basic thesis of like what you call orthodox

470
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:28,479
Speaker 1: Marxist orthodox Marxist political economy would probably or Marksian political economy,

471
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:30,880
Speaker 1: whatever the funk you want to call it. Um. Now,

472
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:35,920
Speaker 1: in in starting in about the nine in twenties, there

473
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:40,040
Speaker 1: was a new Marxism and this is called Neo Marxism.

474
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:43,320
Speaker 1: Neo Marxism is basic Like I heard about that from

475
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:45,639
Speaker 1: Dr Jordan B. Peters. Yea, yeah, yeah right now. Now

476
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:48,960
Speaker 1: now we're gonna get the inside scoop on neo Marxism.

477
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:52,719
Speaker 1: So Neo Marxism their basic thesis is like what if

478
00:25:52,760 --> 00:25:55,879
Speaker 1: profit rates don't equalize across like betwetween different parts of

479
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 1: the economy that make things, and you know, and because

480
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 1: they don't do what what if what if you don't

481
00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:04,040
Speaker 1: get competition because instead of people being able to just

482
00:26:04,040 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: freely move capital between like sectors, what if you have monopolies?

483
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,119
Speaker 1: And if you have monopolies, instead of sort of price

484
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 1: being like a price is just value blah blah blah

485
00:26:14,840 --> 00:26:17,040
Speaker 1: bla because someone can keep moving their money around, price

486
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:19,639
Speaker 1: is now a price. Price is now derived from the

487
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:23,479
Speaker 1: power of a corporation because if you know, if if

488
00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:25,359
Speaker 1: if you if you're a powerful enough corporation to like

489
00:26:25,400 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 1: have a monopoly and stop anyone else in producing the

490
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:28,879
Speaker 1: thing that you do. Now you can now you can

491
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:32,639
Speaker 1: charge what are called markups. And this is where Michael

492
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:38,919
Speaker 1: Collecky like enters from stage left. Um Collecki like he

493
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:41,639
Speaker 1: probably should have been the father father of like modern

494
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:44,680
Speaker 1: macroeconomics in the sense that like he invents a bunch

495
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 1: of the ship that like Caynes does before Kanes did.

496
00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: But the problem is that he's writting a lot of

497
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 1: this in Polish, and so the sort of like anglophone

498
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:55,960
Speaker 1: like economists are not reading it because he's in Poland

499
00:26:55,960 --> 00:26:57,840
Speaker 1: and he's a Marxist and he's writing in polo circles.

500
00:26:57,840 --> 00:26:59,439
Speaker 1: But he invents a bunch of the stuff that like

501
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:03,560
Speaker 1: canes and fences slightly earlier. And she starts like looking

502
00:27:03,560 --> 00:27:05,600
Speaker 1: at like monopoly in oligarchy theory, and he starts trying

503
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:07,480
Speaker 1: to apply it to Marxism, and it's what you know,

504
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:09,560
Speaker 1: his inclusion is that monopolies are powerful enough that they

505
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: can charge these markups, which is just like additional price

506
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:15,439
Speaker 1: increase over like what the like value determined price is

507
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:18,000
Speaker 1: supposed to be, because they can provide anyone else from

508
00:27:18,040 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 1: selling a thing. And then you know, one what what

509
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: once you have a monopoly in the market, you can

510
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:26,399
Speaker 1: force people to just like fucking suck it up and

511
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 1: pay it because they can't get it from anywhere else.

512
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:32,719
Speaker 1: And this is actually this is like pretty similar in

513
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:36,359
Speaker 1: some ways to like a bourgeois economic like theory of

514
00:27:36,359 --> 00:27:38,000
Speaker 1: how the stuff works, which is they're like, okay, yeah,

515
00:27:38,080 --> 00:27:41,640
Speaker 1: in bourgeois economics, like monopolies can increase the price over

516
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:43,480
Speaker 1: We're they're supposed to be in a perfectly competitive market

517
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 1: because they have power. Blah blah blah blah, blah. But

518
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: there's something very different in coluctis work that is not

519
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:51,480
Speaker 1: in the normal bourgeois stuff, which is that what what

520
00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:55,399
Speaker 1: he argues is that trade unions. Okay, so you have

521
00:27:55,400 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 1: a trade union, right it they represented the workers at

522
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: work at a company. And these that these trade unions

523
00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: are fighting over the over the product of the markup,

524
00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: and this keeps the size of markups and these sort

525
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,359
Speaker 1: of like these price increases that monopolies are doing down

526
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:14,800
Speaker 1: because the larger the markup these companies apply, the more

527
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:17,119
Speaker 1: incentive there are there is for unions to sort of

528
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:19,399
Speaker 1: like fight for pay increases, right because okay, well, the

529
00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:22,720
Speaker 1: more expective the goods are, the more money they're like

530
00:28:22,840 --> 00:28:24,639
Speaker 1: very clearly is on hand. And so the larger the

531
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:28,600
Speaker 1: demands you get from organized labor. And this is the

532
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:31,399
Speaker 1: insight that who killed the Phillips curve. The paper I

533
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:34,600
Speaker 1: was talking about jumps on that unions fight over markups

534
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:36,439
Speaker 1: and thus that the strength of unions is part of

535
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:41,120
Speaker 1: what helps determine inflation. And they point out that you know,

536
00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:44,720
Speaker 1: unions want lower prices and for for goods, and the

537
00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 1: reason they want lower prices for goods is that the

538
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 1: higher the price is of something, right, the less people

539
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:54,160
Speaker 1: buy of it, and the less people like buy of

540
00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:56,040
Speaker 1: the thing, the less has to be produced, and that

541
00:28:56,040 --> 00:28:59,520
Speaker 1: means that there's less people being employed. And so if

542
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 1: you're a union and you want like the most number

543
00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:04,040
Speaker 1: of people being employed as you can, and so that

544
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:05,800
Speaker 1: means that means that you want you want prices to

545
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 1: be low, because yeah, that because because lower prices means

546
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: more of the more of the good being produced, and

547
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: more the good being produced means more jobs. And this

548
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:17,840
Speaker 1: is where we get to sort of the fundamental assumption

549
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 1: behind the regular Philip scrip. And this is also true

550
00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 1: for this sort of like new like pseudo neo Marxist one. Right, Um,

551
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,960
Speaker 1: their assumption is that inflation is driven by rising wages.

552
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:34,000
Speaker 1: And you know, even though the unions are trying to

553
00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: sort of like reduce the markup and like and reduce

554
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:39,480
Speaker 1: markups reduced prices to increase the number of workers, firms

555
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 1: are trying to increase prices so they can make back

556
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 1: the money they're paying out in widges. Now when when

557
00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 1: unemployment is like high, this doesn't matter because wages still

558
00:29:48,600 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 1: don't rise very fast because there's you know, there's this

559
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 1: gnormous pool of people who are incredibly desert for jobs,

560
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:54,719
Speaker 1: and you can pay them sort of like nothing, and

561
00:29:54,800 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 1: they'll they'll come work for you, because the alternative is

562
00:29:56,760 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 1: you know, starving or getting evicted. But when when unemployment

563
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:03,480
Speaker 1: is low, the bargaining power of workers increases, and that's

564
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:06,479
Speaker 1: that's that's that's where the class war starts. Yeah, I

565
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 1: mean this, You see this in ninety one with the

566
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 1: screen Cartoonists strike that Scrooge McDuck brutally cracked down on

567
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:19,000
Speaker 1: um and eventually had to seed seed ground to the guild.

568
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 1: But Scrooge, Scrooge McDuck was was brutal during during this

569
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:27,240
Speaker 1: time period post the thirties rise of unions. That's right, Garrison,

570
00:30:27,280 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 1: and that's a big part of why Huey, Dewey and

571
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 1: Louie had to track him down in his money room

572
00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: and stick a bicycle pump into his mouth while he

573
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 1: was sleeping and begin to inflate him largely while touching

574
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:51,400
Speaker 1: themselves criticals Louie, my boy. So as as as as

575
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: with I don't, I can't. I don't even know how

576
00:30:53,280 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 1: to transition that I can't do it, but nobody does.

577
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:01,280
Speaker 1: I mean, really, the main thing is that the concentration

578
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:03,080
Speaker 1: of wealth in the hands of a small number of

579
00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 1: individuals will inevitably lead to inflation, which is true. And

580
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 1: and this is one of the things that um that

581
00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 1: that that the economists are sort of talking about here,

582
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: which is that like, okay, so once once you get

583
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:17,760
Speaker 1: an actual sort of once you once you get like

584
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: a real class work going on right where you're you're

585
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 1: you're getting in a class work to the extent that

586
00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 1: like the bargaining power of workers into bargaining power of

587
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:28,640
Speaker 1: of like capitalist verbs are essentially like very close to

588
00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:34,480
Speaker 1: being equal. Um, you get inflation. Now, what's interesting about

589
00:31:34,520 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 1: this is that when you have strong unions, like when

590
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 1: you have strong unions, you get high rates of inflation

591
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 1: during periods of sort of inflation shocks, right, because the

592
00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 1: unions are sort of like propping up wages in this theory.

593
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:48,640
Speaker 1: But and this is the interesting part, right, you get

594
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: way lower rates of unemployment. And so it's okay, it's

595
00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 1: to step back for a second. So what's happening here is, right,

596
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 1: if you have if you have strong unions and there's

597
00:31:55,520 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 1: something else in the supply chain that increases costs, say

598
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: to to to pick a copletely random example that never happened. Uh, say,

599
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: for example, you're in the nineteen seventies and the price

600
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:07,720
Speaker 1: of oil is quadrupled in one year, and that increases

601
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: the price of everything. Now when when when you have

602
00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 1: a strong but this never happened, don't google the oil shocks. Actually,

603
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 1: literally don't google the oil shocks because almost everything written

604
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:22,520
Speaker 1: online about the oil shocks is a lie. I yeah,

605
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:25,320
Speaker 1: I think I've talked about that before. On the other

606
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:26,959
Speaker 1: pois never sood but yeah, it's it's all lie. But

607
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 1: but basically, like one of the what you know, okay,

608
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:30,920
Speaker 1: what what what happens here is if you if you're

609
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 1: strong unions, you get a bunch of inflation, but people

610
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:38,800
Speaker 1: don't get fired. And when when corporations are strong and

611
00:32:38,840 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: you don't have unions, you know, you get these shocks

612
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 1: and the inflation rate is much lower, but everyone gets fired.

613
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:45,520
Speaker 1: You unemployment rate goes up to like ten percent. Uh.

614
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's an absolute disaster. So that's that's

615
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 1: one thing to note about about the way that sort

616
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:54,840
Speaker 1: of the Philips curve, the sort of Marxian Philips curve,

617
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:59,960
Speaker 1: like analyze the situation, right, But there's another consequence here

618
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 1: which comes back to like what inflation is under a

619
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: Phillips curve, Right, Inflation en Phillips curve is literally just

620
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 1: wage increases. Right, So when when union power is weak,

621
00:33:09,760 --> 00:33:11,920
Speaker 1: inflation stuff. But like, what does this actually mean? What

622
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:17,600
Speaker 1: it means is that wages aren't growing, sure, aren't. Yeah,

623
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: And and this brings us back to like the sort

624
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 1: of weirdness we saw in the early part of the episode,

625
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:23,480
Speaker 1: right right after two thousand eight, right where there should

626
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: have been deflation because the unemployment rate was really high

627
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: and also like junior recovery period were uninflation rate is,

628
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 1: unemployment rate is super low. But and there should have

629
00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:34,560
Speaker 1: been inflation, but there wasn't. And the answer is why

630
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:36,800
Speaker 1: why wasn't there inflation? It's well, okay, because no one

631
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 1: had a union and so everyone's wages just stayed the

632
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 1: same the whole time. I have another explanation for this.

633
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:45,480
Speaker 1: And when I previously when I previously said the Ducktails

634
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:47,560
Speaker 1: game came out into US to night, I was actually incorrect.

635
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 1: US Night was when Nintendo Power listed the Ducktails game

636
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 1: as the thirteenth best Nintendo Entertainment System game. Um there was.

637
00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:58,880
Speaker 1: It was voted that into US a night. Now, it's

638
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: important that thirty it's a very unlucky number. So by

639
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 1: voting the duck Tails game best game from the NS

640
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:09,320
Speaker 1: into thousan eight, and they could have basically caused a

641
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:12,440
Speaker 1: psychic rift in the fabric of the universe, creating the

642
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:16,239
Speaker 1: financial crash. That's fascinating, Garrison, because I was thirteen in

643
00:34:16,280 --> 00:34:19,400
Speaker 1: two thousand one when I came across that angel Fire

644
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:24,360
Speaker 1: website with home drawn Ducktails inflation pornography. Wait, so this

645
00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 1: CAUs I think in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah,

646
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:31,880
Speaker 1: that's all connected. You know who else may have been

647
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:35,400
Speaker 1: a contributing factor to nine eleven? The products and services

648
00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 1: that support this podcast? I think that's right, that's right.

649
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 1: We do not accept a sponsor unless it gets the

650
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 1: explicit sign off of the King of Saudi Arabia. Um who,

651
00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:59,800
Speaker 1: if you'll remember, did nine eleven? All right, Yeah, I'm

652
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 1: not getting and I am not getting paid off to

653
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 1: properly tradition this, so I'm not going to Uh So

654
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:08,200
Speaker 1: it turns out that yeah, so the reason there hasn't

655
00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:10,960
Speaker 1: been inflation is that there's no unions. Because we don't

656
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:14,440
Speaker 1: have unions. Are wages all suck? And uh? This means

657
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:16,640
Speaker 1: that you know, wages, wages are stagnant low, and it

658
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: means that they're not a drive. The unions aren't a

659
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:21,600
Speaker 1: driver of inflation. And also low wages are driver inflation

660
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:26,640
Speaker 1: because they you know, like unions aren't around to increase wages. Now, Meanwhile,

661
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:28,920
Speaker 1: the other thing that this suggests is that monetary policy

662
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 1: and they okay, I think they're they're in exact analysis

663
00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: was like I think like eighty four percent of like

664
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: inflation shocks can be explained by looking at like union density, um.

665
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:42,920
Speaker 1: But this also means it means what like monetary policy,

666
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:44,840
Speaker 1: like how much money there is like in the economy

667
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:49,799
Speaker 1: has like basically no role inflation whatsoever. And and this

668
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:51,399
Speaker 1: is you know, okay, so like like this has all

669
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:53,360
Speaker 1: been sort of one perspective from some economist of the

670
00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:56,000
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve, and we can ask the question like why

671
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:58,560
Speaker 1: does this matter? Right, like why why why? Why does

672
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:00,680
Speaker 1: like sort of one like group of people on the

673
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:04,120
Speaker 1: Fed like their response this matters, And partly it matters

674
00:36:04,120 --> 00:36:06,800
Speaker 1: because it's again extremely funny to watch the Federal Reserve

675
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 1: turning to neo Marxists too, like try to explain why

676
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 1: inflation happens. But it also matters because theories of inflation

677
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 1: dictate inflation policy. Um. Jerome Powell, who's the chairman the

678
00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:19,720
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve, has had a press conference on May fourth,

679
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:22,120
Speaker 1: and it's too long to play the whole thing, but

680
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:24,560
Speaker 1: he has the speech, and he lays out a few

681
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: things that are interesting. So he talks about a bunch

682
00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 1: of stuff that's causing inflation, rights, production bottlenecks, increasing crude

683
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:35,120
Speaker 1: oil prices, concreasing commodity prices from like Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

684
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:38,480
Speaker 1: Like he's lockdowns and shine oother keeping factory like clothes,

685
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:40,359
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, okay, those are all like reasonable things

686
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:43,359
Speaker 1: that cause inflation. But then when you get to like

687
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:45,960
Speaker 1: what the Fed is actually going to do, he starts

688
00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:47,880
Speaker 1: talking about how the job market is too good for

689
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:49,839
Speaker 1: workers right now and unemployment is too low and that's

690
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 1: what driving wages up. So he's planning he's going to

691
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 1: tinker around with monetary policy to reduce wages and decrease

692
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:59,840
Speaker 1: the demand for jobs. And this brings us back to

693
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:02,399
Speaker 1: two things. The first part is just the class war

694
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:05,680
Speaker 1: part of inflation. Right, prices are rising right now because

695
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:09,240
Speaker 1: someone inside like prices are rising right now, and someone

696
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:11,840
Speaker 1: inside if you want them to not to like cease

697
00:37:11,920 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 1: to continue rising somewhat some part of like the company

698
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:18,120
Speaker 1: is going to have to take a hit to like

699
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:21,160
Speaker 1: the their percentage of like the sort of the markup, right,

700
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:23,320
Speaker 1: like their their percentage of like the price increase of

701
00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:29,239
Speaker 1: the corporations do above like cost and okay, so someone

702
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:32,319
Speaker 1: has to do this, And the Federal Reserve like absolutely

703
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:33,960
Speaker 1: wants to make sure that the person paying for that

704
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 1: is you, the worker. And the second part is something

705
00:37:37,680 --> 00:37:39,720
Speaker 1: you might have picked up on if you're paying close attention.

706
00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:41,960
Speaker 1: And this has been something that's been true of of

707
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:45,080
Speaker 1: both like the FED chairman and the FED economists do

708
00:37:45,120 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 1: this too, which is they do this wh they talk

709
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: about inflation. They do this kind of two steps. Right,

710
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:52,120
Speaker 1: They talk about a shock or something that causes prices

711
00:37:52,120 --> 00:37:54,280
Speaker 1: to increase, like you know, a bunch of Ukrainian wheat

712
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: like suddenly being on harvest will because the Russian army

713
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: is squatting on it, or like Chinese factory shutting down

714
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:02,280
Speaker 1: just an amount of weed or price electronics or sorry

715
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:04,240
Speaker 1: reduces the amount of wheach or the amount of electronics

716
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:06,359
Speaker 1: being produced that drives out prices. Right, they talk about

717
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,560
Speaker 1: like there's an inflationary shock, and then they start talking

718
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: and instead of talking about that anymore, they start talking

719
00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:14,320
Speaker 1: about unemployment levels and the job market and monetary policy

720
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:16,719
Speaker 1: being what drives inflation. And I think this is this

721
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 1: is a very important piece of ideology because if you

722
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: look at what's going on here, right if if you know,

723
00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:23,719
Speaker 1: if you go back to the seventies, it's not like

724
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:26,319
Speaker 1: inflation in the seventies is not the Union's fault, like

725
00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:28,880
Speaker 1: you know, the the the in the inflation in the

726
00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:31,840
Speaker 1: seventies was like in large part the original price increases

727
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:34,279
Speaker 1: because the price of oil country country pulled in one year.

728
00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 1: But you know, but the Fed instead focuses on wage

729
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:40,839
Speaker 1: increases is what drives inflation, even even if they're sort

730
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:43,640
Speaker 1: of like using like Marxists to do it. And what

731
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:46,240
Speaker 1: they're doing here is shifting the focus from the actual

732
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:49,759
Speaker 1: shock that is like the thing, the immediate thing that

733
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 1: is increasing prices, and they're shifting the focus from the

734
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 1: shock to the people who are reacting to it. And

735
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:58,000
Speaker 1: from there the question stops being about like dealing with

736
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:00,239
Speaker 1: the shock itself and starts being about who is going

737
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:03,120
Speaker 1: to pay for these price increases? And in the nineteen eighties,

738
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:05,680
Speaker 1: like Reagan's Reagan solutions, this is well, okay, she's just

739
00:39:05,719 --> 00:39:07,800
Speaker 1: gonna make organized labor pay for it, and so she

740
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:10,759
Speaker 1: just annihilates the annihilist the unions. He uses the state

741
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:13,480
Speaker 1: to do it, just crushes the unions completely. And price increases,

742
00:39:13,520 --> 00:39:16,320
Speaker 1: you know, prices stop increasing, right, And they stop increasing

743
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:19,719
Speaker 1: because the production costs of all of these goods like

744
00:39:19,880 --> 00:39:22,279
Speaker 1: decreased because workers are no longer getting paid and they

745
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:26,560
Speaker 1: lose all their benefits. But this is the thing they

746
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 1: never dealt with the actual source of the problem, right,

747
00:39:29,120 --> 00:39:31,279
Speaker 1: Oil prices are still really high to this day, and

748
00:39:31,320 --> 00:39:35,120
Speaker 1: we've never transitioned off oil. And so to look at

749
00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:37,880
Speaker 1: sort of that problem, I want to briefly look at

750
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 1: another theory of inflation, which is one presented by Steve Mann,

751
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 1: who I think I've actually had on the show before.

752
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:44,080
Speaker 1: He's one of the people at Strange Matters, and he

753
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:46,640
Speaker 1: wrote he wrote this article called Notes towards the Theory

754
00:39:46,680 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 1: of Inflation, which is based on the work of a

755
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:53,080
Speaker 1: heterodox economist named Frederick Lee, who is he's a cool

756
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:55,759
Speaker 1: guy and all of his stuff is like completely out

757
00:39:55,800 --> 00:39:58,840
Speaker 1: there from the compens from decom perspective, but it it

758
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:03,279
Speaker 1: makes more than most regularly kind of stuff. So the

759
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 1: sort of like founding observation of like that like projectally

760
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 1: is basing his stuff on. Is that like, okay, prices

761
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 1: are not set by like an abstract market. Right, the

762
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:15,399
Speaker 1: price of something in a grocery store is set by

763
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:17,440
Speaker 1: a guy like that there there there was a specific

764
00:40:17,440 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 1: guy or they're like several specific guys whose job it

765
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 1: is to set the prices for the firm. Um. This

766
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:24,439
Speaker 1: this this theory of like what it's not even a theory,

767
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:27,160
Speaker 1: like the fact that this is how prices are formed

768
00:40:27,160 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 1: by just a guy who sits there with a notebook

769
00:40:29,239 --> 00:40:30,719
Speaker 1: or like a computer. Is this is what the price

770
00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:33,960
Speaker 1: is going to be. This is called administered prices. And

771
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 1: Lee like very confestently argues that like this is how

772
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 1: firm This is how both large and small firms actually

773
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 1: set their prices. Right, a guy calculates his expenses, he

774
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:44,959
Speaker 1: adds a mark up, and he sets the price. Now,

775
00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 1: Steve Man argues that these prices don't generally tend to

776
00:40:48,719 --> 00:40:53,799
Speaker 1: increase naturally because the price setters don't generally want to

777
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:56,440
Speaker 1: just increase the price randomly. Because if you if you

778
00:40:56,520 --> 00:40:59,360
Speaker 1: increase the price randomly you will pass off your customers.

779
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:02,319
Speaker 1: And the customers you know, okay, they'll they'll tolerate like

780
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:04,400
Speaker 1: some small increases. But if you raise the price enough,

781
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:07,239
Speaker 1: they lose your goodwill towards your brand and they'll like

782
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:09,239
Speaker 1: they'll go off and try to find another brand. And

783
00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:11,640
Speaker 1: this is disastrous because even if you reduce the prices

784
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 1: back down again, like the good will is lost. And

785
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:15,160
Speaker 1: that's sort of like you know, the sort of like

786
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 1: happy association that like you have in your brain between

787
00:41:17,600 --> 00:41:20,719
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like Nestly chocolate or something, or

788
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 1: like whatever brand of things you're buying, like you get

789
00:41:23,560 --> 00:41:25,239
Speaker 1: piste off with them because the price is now like

790
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: way higher, so you know, you don't go back to

791
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 1: the same like grocery store because that they've increased their prices.

792
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: Now obviously this is like there's like this subject constraints, right, Like,

793
00:41:33,719 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: if if you need insulin, and the monopoly that controls

794
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: insulin production, just jack's the price, You're screwed, right, there's

795
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:42,319
Speaker 1: no sort of like there's no other place you can

796
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:44,360
Speaker 1: get insulin unless you're gonna try to make it so

797
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:46,799
Speaker 1: your your your solutions are you either try to ration

798
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:48,879
Speaker 1: it and you die or you pay for the price

799
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:52,560
Speaker 1: increases and this this is bad and it does happen.

800
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:55,200
Speaker 1: But most goods aren't like this, and so price increases,

801
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:57,360
Speaker 1: when they happen, tend to be small and fairly infrequent,

802
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:02,880
Speaker 1: unless unless the person that The reason this doesn't this

803
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen is if the person setting the price has

804
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:07,440
Speaker 1: no choice. And the main reason that if you're a

805
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:09,320
Speaker 1: person setting a price, that you would have no choice

806
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:12,359
Speaker 1: but to increase like the price that that that that

807
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:14,440
Speaker 1: you're setting. The main reason you would do this because

808
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: something happened to your supply chain. UM, I don't I

809
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:19,240
Speaker 1: don't know if you'll see that. There was a TikTok

810
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 1: going around from a farmer in Iowa who was talking

811
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:24,719
Speaker 1: about like why price white food prices are going to

812
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:28,800
Speaker 1: keep increasing. The woman, honestly, I bless her heart, honestly

813
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:30,640
Speaker 1: thinks that food prices are not going to go up.

814
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:32,480
Speaker 1: She thinks that this is the highest they're going to go.

815
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 1: I tried to explain to her that that was not

816
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:37,399
Speaker 1: the case, that they're absolutely going to go up even more. Um,

817
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:39,640
Speaker 1: and I told her there are things that like we

818
00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:41,440
Speaker 1: have to buy, there's something we had to buy that

819
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:43,799
Speaker 1: two years ago, cost is twenty four dollars. Last year

820
00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:45,920
Speaker 1: was about forty six. This year it is costing US

821
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:50,760
Speaker 1: nineties six dollars. Okay, local farmer fifty had a cattle.

822
00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:54,960
Speaker 1: It's costing him eight thousand dollars a month to feed them.

823
00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 1: Please understand, food prices are going to go up. Yeah,

824
00:42:58,480 --> 00:42:59,880
Speaker 1: and so and so you can see here what's happening.

825
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:02,280
Speaker 1: It like at some point down the supply chain, prices

826
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:04,600
Speaker 1: are increasing either because of like climate change, because of

827
00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:06,799
Speaker 1: the word Ukraine, because of COVID, because of like any

828
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: thousands sort of other factors. And eventually the like the

829
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:12,839
Speaker 1: farmers who are setting the prices, right, they have to

830
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:16,080
Speaker 1: increase their prices because they don't have they don't have

831
00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 1: a choice, right, because because the each person further back

832
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:22,120
Speaker 1: in the suppyline as a charity, right, like they have

833
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: to be able to pay a bunch of ship build. Yeah,

834
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 1: and and this this sort you know that this is

835
00:43:28,160 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 1: the Steve calls it like that. He calls it the

836
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:32,800
Speaker 1: supply chain theory of inflation. Right, and you know in

837
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:35,520
Speaker 1: this model, like this is what's causing inflation. Right, each

838
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:38,680
Speaker 1: person successively down the line has to eat, has to

839
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:40,640
Speaker 1: increase their mark up because they have to cover their

840
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:43,120
Speaker 1: they have to cover the new, newly increased production costs.

841
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:47,560
Speaker 1: And this is important because unlike most models of inflation,

842
00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:49,600
Speaker 1: inflation isn't being caused by like some kind of like

843
00:43:49,600 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 1: giant macroeconomic thing, like it's not being caused by like

844
00:43:52,719 --> 00:43:56,120
Speaker 1: unemployment or like monetary policy, but it's being caused by

845
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 1: very very specific microreconomic forces that you know, there are

846
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:02,800
Speaker 1: literally specific people who as a reaction to a specific

847
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 1: thing happening that makes production harder or increasing their prices.

848
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: And this is a very different sort of you know

849
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:12,400
Speaker 1: that this is a very very different theory of inflation

850
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 1: than like any of the like seventeen mainstream ones, all

851
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 1: of which are bad in various ways. And yeah, and

852
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:23,719
Speaker 1: there's there's one other thing I want to mention though

853
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:25,880
Speaker 1: that kind of isn't talked about in this model, that

854
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 1: is absolutely happening right now, and that's um And then

855
00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 1: something that is really one of the drivers of inflation,

856
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:36,000
Speaker 1: which is that corporations are raising prices because they think

857
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:38,640
Speaker 1: they can get away with it, and they're just pocketing

858
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 1: the costs. And and this isn't so this isn't like

859
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:43,239
Speaker 1: a sort of speculative thing. Uh companies, when you ask

860
00:44:43,320 --> 00:44:45,560
Speaker 1: them about it, are very very open about it. Here

861
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:50,319
Speaker 1: here's from a Business Insider article. What we are very

862
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:53,720
Speaker 1: good at is pricing. Colgate Palm of Oil CEO Noah

863
00:44:53,760 --> 00:44:57,520
Speaker 1: Wallace said, whether it's foreign exchange inflation or raw unpacking

864
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:00,239
Speaker 1: material inflation, we have found ways over time to cover

865
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:03,399
Speaker 1: that in our margin line. We've been we've been very

866
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:05,680
Speaker 1: comfortable with our ability to pass on the increases that

867
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:09,320
Speaker 1: we've seen at this point, said uh Croker CFO Gary

868
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:12,239
Speaker 1: Miller Chip in October. And we would expect that to

869
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:14,600
Speaker 1: continue to be the case. And here here's from here's

870
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:17,239
Speaker 1: from the Wall Street Journal, where more people talk about

871
00:45:17,239 --> 00:45:20,440
Speaker 1: doing this. We have not seen any material reaction from consumers,

872
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:23,560
Speaker 1: Procter and Gamble finance chief Andre Sholton said last week,

873
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:25,640
Speaker 1: referring to a string of price increases that went into

874
00:45:25,640 --> 00:45:28,680
Speaker 1: effect in September. So that makes us feel good about

875
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:33,279
Speaker 1: our relative position. Now, those two articles, like, just those

876
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:37,600
Speaker 1: two articles alone talk about prices raising, Like talk about

877
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:39,760
Speaker 1: companies that are just raising prices because they know consumers

878
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:41,560
Speaker 1: will pay for it, because I think there's inflation happening,

879
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:44,760
Speaker 1: and those companies just from those two articles alone include

880
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:48,479
Speaker 1: Procter and Gamble, nest LEA, Verizon, Unilever, Colgate, Palm of Oil,

881
00:45:48,640 --> 00:45:53,400
Speaker 1: Coca Cola, Pepsi, Gillette, Chipotle, A, T and T, Verizon, Kimberly,

882
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:56,600
Speaker 1: Clark Corp, Clarox, Reynolds, Kroeger's, and Albertson and like that.

883
00:45:56,719 --> 00:45:59,840
Speaker 1: That's that's just like the corporations in the article that

884
00:45:59,880 --> 00:46:03,759
Speaker 1: are like specifically named as talking about having done this right.

885
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:06,480
Speaker 1: And they can get away with this because normally normally

886
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:08,719
Speaker 1: write price increases to piss people off, they go to

887
00:46:08,719 --> 00:46:11,320
Speaker 1: go free for brands. But if if prices across the

888
00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:14,520
Speaker 1: board are already increasing, you can you can just like

889
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 1: do basically like a price gouge increase, and you can

890
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:19,080
Speaker 1: do and you can increase your markup and it doesn't

891
00:46:19,080 --> 00:46:21,480
Speaker 1: it doesn't affect your goodwill because people just assume that

892
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 1: inflation is already happening, and that inflation happens sort of naturally.

893
00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:26,879
Speaker 1: Is either because the wage like wages are too high,

894
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:28,560
Speaker 1: there's too much money in circulation, so oh, there's just

895
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:31,880
Speaker 1: like inflation happening. Is this like abstract thing instead of

896
00:46:31,880 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 1: what is actually happening, which there are very specific like

897
00:46:34,840 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 1: they're individual people with with names and addresses who specifically

898
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:42,320
Speaker 1: increase the price in order to screw you, and that

899
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:44,879
Speaker 1: that that's that's what's actually at stake here, and having

900
00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:48,120
Speaker 1: explanation for why inflation happens, it tells you who to

901
00:46:48,160 --> 00:46:51,320
Speaker 1: blame for it. Like right now, Larry Summers, who was

902
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:57,640
Speaker 1: the former Treasury secretary who was responsible for arguably responsible

903
00:46:57,680 --> 00:46:59,640
Speaker 1: for two thousand directly responsible for two thousand and eight,

904
00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 1: one of people who completely annihilated the entire Russian economy

905
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:05,719
Speaker 1: in the nineties. Uh, he is has apparently been on

906
00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:07,920
Speaker 1: the phone with Joe Biden, and he is going around

907
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 1: saying that in order to solve inflation, we have to

908
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:13,280
Speaker 1: cut wages and rage the unemployment rate to five percent,

909
00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:15,560
Speaker 1: like for five years, like on average five percent for

910
00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:18,239
Speaker 1: five years. And so this means either you have five

911
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 1: percent of five percent, five years of five percent inflation,

912
00:47:21,480 --> 00:47:23,920
Speaker 1: two years of inflation at seven point five percent, or

913
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:26,920
Speaker 1: like one year of teen percent unemployment. And again unemployment

914
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:28,440
Speaker 1: right now is it like three percent? So she's talking

915
00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:32,040
Speaker 1: about millions, potentially tens of millions of people losing their

916
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:34,400
Speaker 1: jobs in in order to in order to solve inflation.

917
00:47:34,600 --> 00:47:37,960
Speaker 1: Because Summers again, Summers is going back on the sort

918
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:40,239
Speaker 1: of Phillips model ship, right, where inflation is caused by

919
00:47:40,560 --> 00:47:43,240
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't even matter what's actually causing the inflation,

920
00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:45,240
Speaker 1: which is a bunch of a combination of price gouging

921
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:49,040
Speaker 1: and like, uh, supply chage distructions. Right, She's going, Okay,

922
00:47:49,719 --> 00:47:52,440
Speaker 1: who His theory isn't about what is causing inflation. His

923
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 1: theory is about who's way to pay for it. And

924
00:47:54,400 --> 00:47:56,919
Speaker 1: his solution is, fuck you. You are going to pay

925
00:47:56,920 --> 00:47:58,920
Speaker 1: for it. You're going to pay for both the price increases,

926
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 1: which the prices won't fucking come back down. That's the

927
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:03,360
Speaker 1: other part of this, right, Once once you get inflation,

928
00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:05,640
Speaker 1: and once the prices rise, they're sticky, they don't fucking fall.

929
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:09,759
Speaker 1: And what he's saying is, yeah, fuck you, you you are

930
00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: going to pay for it. You're going to continue to

931
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:13,160
Speaker 1: pay these prices. You're also going to pay for it

932
00:48:13,200 --> 00:48:16,080
Speaker 1: by reducing your wages. You're going to pay for it

933
00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:19,200
Speaker 1: by getting fired. And you know, and this is this

934
00:48:19,239 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 1: is the sort of the choice that we have, right,

935
00:48:20,520 --> 00:48:22,640
Speaker 1: It's either we let the ruling class tell exactly the

936
00:48:22,680 --> 00:48:25,880
Speaker 1: same stories about why inflation happens. They've been telling fifty

937
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:28,400
Speaker 1: years that they know we're wrong, that they that they

938
00:48:28,440 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 1: know are so wrong they're desperate enough to turn to

939
00:48:30,560 --> 00:48:33,719
Speaker 1: fucking Marxism to try to find explanations for it. Or

940
00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:36,239
Speaker 1: we find it, we find a new like explanation of

941
00:48:36,239 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 1: why fucking inflation happens, and we go back, we take

942
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:41,040
Speaker 1: the stuff that they've stolen from us, and then we

943
00:48:41,040 --> 00:48:44,919
Speaker 1: appropriate the bastards so they don't do it again. And

944
00:48:45,080 --> 00:48:46,640
Speaker 1: that is that that that that is what I have

945
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:53,319
Speaker 1: to say about inflation. Yeah, I mean again, what what

946
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:57,720
Speaker 1: we need to do is if we organize as a people,

947
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:04,160
Speaker 1: and as a people come the vacuum tube that we

948
00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:07,759
Speaker 1: need to shove down the esophagus of Summers and other

949
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:11,080
Speaker 1: members of the ruling class in order to inflate their

950
00:49:11,239 --> 00:49:16,280
Speaker 1: organs so that their asshole widens and we can collectively

951
00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:22,600
Speaker 1: fuck them until they deflate. Is that more or less accurate? Chris?

952
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 1: Would you say? Economically? Sure? I mean, you know this

953
00:49:28,200 --> 00:49:30,400
Speaker 1: is honestly okay, I would say, like, this is the

954
00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:31,920
Speaker 1: thing that, this is the thing about having an explation

955
00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:33,719
Speaker 1: for wine inflation happens. Right, It doesn't matter if it's

956
00:49:33,719 --> 00:49:37,400
Speaker 1: true or not. You can as long as long as

957
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:40,040
Speaker 1: you have a compelling enough explanation for inflation to cause

958
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:42,640
Speaker 1: people to do something you can you can, I mean,

959
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:44,240
Speaker 1: and this this is one of the things. For example,

960
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:46,440
Speaker 1: like this is one of the things that caused Tenement

961
00:49:46,480 --> 00:49:48,920
Speaker 1: to happen, is that there was skywalketing inflation and the

962
00:49:49,160 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 1: like workers had an explanation of inflation. It wasn't right,

963
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:54,719
Speaker 1: like yeah, I mean that their explation for inflation had

964
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:57,279
Speaker 1: to do with like the like China was taking in

965
00:49:57,320 --> 00:49:59,360
Speaker 1: a bunch of loans and the CCP was spending all

966
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:02,279
Speaker 1: their money on warts cars and it's like it's it's

967
00:50:02,320 --> 00:50:04,200
Speaker 1: kind of marginal whether it was like true or not,

968
00:50:04,280 --> 00:50:07,680
Speaker 1: but it doesn't matter, right, infla inflation could be caused

969
00:50:07,719 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 1: by the fact that we haven't fucking inflated right on

970
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:16,640
Speaker 1: that point. And this is this is this is true.

971
00:50:16,680 --> 00:50:20,560
Speaker 1: You can look this up online. Um. So, the original

972
00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 1: Ducktails game from nine was remastered in two thousand thirteen,

973
00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:32,000
Speaker 1: and it was real. It was released on August thirteen,

974
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:36,279
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, the remaster of the Duct Tails game

975
00:50:36,520 --> 00:50:40,480
Speaker 1: thirteen thirteen, both on Lucky Numbers. I think that could

976
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:42,520
Speaker 1: have just just as much to do with our current

977
00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:45,960
Speaker 1: economic problem around inflation as basically anything else. Chris has

978
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:51,280
Speaker 1: said here um because August two thousand thirteen Ducktails getting

979
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:55,400
Speaker 1: released Scrooge McDuck main character. That is too much to

980
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:57,720
Speaker 1: be a coincidence. Yeah, we are through the looking glass.

981
00:50:57,760 --> 00:51:00,320
Speaker 1: I can see the Nords like there's there's there's no

982
00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:06,840
Speaker 1: getting away from this one. Look, all you have to

983
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:09,359
Speaker 1: do is you just gotta go. You gotta show up

984
00:51:09,360 --> 00:51:10,759
Speaker 1: to the rule of the fucking money is and you've

985
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:12,920
Speaker 1: gotta take it from them. Do you guys show up

986
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 1: kind of show up to the factories and inflate your

987
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:24,640
Speaker 1: bosses and you will inflation will come down. Yeah, would

988
00:51:24,640 --> 00:51:31,279
Speaker 1: work everybody. It could Happen here as a production of

989
00:51:31,320 --> 00:51:34,239
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,

990
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:36,799
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check

991
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:39,120
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

992
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:42,280
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources

993
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:44,839
Speaker 1: for It could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone

994
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:47,640
Speaker 1: media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.