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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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Don’t really want to redebate these issues. Mostly just wanted a little rebuttal to “Biden was moderate” which both sides claim of their guy.

Fwiw though I don’t M’s do a very good job predicting inflation. Part of this is IOER and other plumbing by the Fed that sterilizes a lot of the production of the M’s created by the Fed.

I don't reasonably see any way to handwave and say that quadrupling the money supply would have no effect on inflation. That seems like one of those things you can only believe after a lot of education.

If that weren't enough, the biggest budget deficit in a hundred years was under Trump, not Biden. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD

If you don't want to redebate the issues you shouldn't make claims that are at odds with easily observable reality.

The Democrats consistently pushed for higher spending and tighter pandemic restrictions and were opposed by the Republicans. Biden mostly benefited from taking office after the worst was over. Biden also wanted to do students loan forgiveness but was stopped by a conservative court. Trump is certainly not a budget hawk but I don't think it tells the whole story to just look at results without taking into account the circumstances of when they happened.

It's crazy to blame inflation on Biden when the deficit and money printing happened under Trump, and justify it with a Biden policy that never happened.

My claims are inline with the economics profession. Bob Elliot had this exact debate on twitter a few months ago and no one though the M’s were predictive.

Also if you look at them we should be having a large amount of deflation right now. Which is obviously false.

And obviously we should have had hyperinflation at some point in the past.

Like I said, a lot of education.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that printing money and deficit spending happened most under Trump. If you don't think either of those cause inflation i don't know what to say.

Does a thought requiring a lot of education or expertise mean that the thought is therefore false?