Interest About Inflation Seems to be Creeping Back

As usual, Paul Krugman has been going on about how we need more inflation. There is no surprise there, as this has always been his position (though one has to wonder how he feels about the woes of Argentina and Venezuela). Christina Romer has always come forward recently to discuss the need to further inflate the currency. Meanwhile, those of us separated from the Ivory Towers are left to deal with the real effects of currency inflation.

Barley. Think about how helpful lower food prices would have been with incomes crashing and people losing jobs. No, rising food prices are exactly what the farm lobby wanted.

Beef. These prices never fell. Looks like we're losing a lot of nutrition, and this is a population that is already starved for quality food.

Iron. Construction was hit particularly hard by the depression, due to malinvestment accumulating in higher goods industries. Think about what wonders lower prices of raw materials would have done to the failing industry.

Meanwhile, inflation rates in Argentina and Venezuela are near 25%. Is your income doubling every 2.8 years to keep up with that kind of inflation, not to mention your investments? Good luck with that.

A.J. Ellis and the New Power

Just some interesting information I stumbled upon while fooling around on Fanrgaphs one day:

Mar/Apr TSL: .291/.443/.400 Which is good for a wRC+ of 131
May TSL: .333/.419/.556 Which is good for a wRC+ of 168

Now here is the interesting part. Ellis' BABIP is still pretty high, but we really don't know yet what it should regress down to. That said, his BABIP was better in April, yet his stats are better in May. He has dropped in OBP, but he has jumped big time in slg%. So what gives?

Pitchers wised up quickly to the fact that Ellis is a patient hitter. In April Ellis was getting 2.5 strikes per plate appearance and 2.2 balls. In May, Ellis is getting 2.9 strikes per plate appearance and just 1.8 balls. Pitchers know now that they cannot afford to throw any balls out of the strike zone to him. But unfortunately for pitchers, it just is not that easy to shut him down. Because he's getting more balls in the strike zone, his LD% has gone up. This signals better contact, which could explain the completely unexpected power production (4 homeruns in the month is much more than anyone ever expected from him).

Over the past 14 days, we have seen much more of a human A.J. Ellis, as his strikeout rate has gone up to 27% of all plate appearances, whereas over this year it is at 19%. His BB% is also down to just 8% of all plate appearances, whereas over the year it is at 16%. How does he deal with a slump? We will wait and see.

The Competition of the States

I post this image here not directly to comment on the problem that is federal spending and debt (and be sure, it is probably the greatest threat to national sovereignty that this country faces, despite the shill protestations of the war hawks who are ever-ready to consternate us with threats of terrorists). I instead want to point out a shift of the relations between the states and national government around the early 20th century. It is notably around this time that national spending begins to soar.

What does this have to do with federalism? Frank Chodorov wrote in his book The Income Tax: The Root of all Evil that the income tax is what has allowed the national government to become the behemoth that it is today. The main point of the argument is that before the 16th amendment, the US government was not able to do much because it did not have many revenues. Relying on excise taxes can only get you so far. Once the income tax was instituted through an amendment (this, incidentally enough, was not the first time that an income tax was imposed on the country), the direction of this country fundamentally changed. Rather than being a generally free market economy that espoused the principles of classical liberalism, the US would morph into an essentially fascist country (allusions to Hitler can be ignored, as this country started to look much like Mussolini's Italy in the few decades after the income tax was instituted). Since that time, the military has greatly increased, taxation has increased, regulation has increased, and the size and scope of the national government has increased. As a result, economic production is down, we are much less safe (due to resentment from our global presence), and the prospect for increased standard of living in the future is greatly diminished.

The competition between the states and national government, it could be argued, is what guaranteed a small government and personal liberty during the 19th century. Since it has been eliminated, the check on the growth of government has been all but eliminated. This is not a new argument. Frank Chodorov made it decades ago, and Tom Woods recently made it in his book Nullification. The question now is how to restore this lost competition and regain our liberty that we have been robbed of.