Atlanta, GA
February 5, 2024
As I finished lunch, my rear molar came apart.
Like cypress knees piercing my lower gums, jagged spikes were all that remained of the shattered tooth.
The next morning, I visited the dentist.
“Are you feeling any pain?”, she asked as I took a seat.
“No.”
“Good. Let’s take a look.”
I settled into the chair, reclined, and opened my mouth. When I did, the ivory carpenter grabbed a mirror, peered in…and pulled away. She gave a reflexive response no patient wants to hear.
“Oh wow!”
“Whgt chephamnd?”, I responded.
“Sorry”, she replied, removing the utensil from my mouth. “What’d you say?”
“What happened?”, I repeated.
“Oh. Your tooth cracked. The top is completely gone. You sure you’re not feeling any pain?”
“Should I be?”
“Not necessarily. Just depends whether a nerve ending was hit. Given how much tooth is lost, I’m surprised one wasn’t. We should still be able to put a crown on it. We can do that now if you like.”
“Yes, please”, I pleaded. “How did this happen?”
“Probably just wear and tear. Years of chewing, grinding, crunching. Teeth wear out and give way. Looks like that’s what happened here.”
Or, after half a century marinating my mouth in morning coffee and evening wine, maybe it was a matter of time before acid and alcohol took their toll on my teeth.
Within minutes, impressions were taken to create the crown. Then the needle arrived to deliver the Novocain.
“Time to numb the area. We need to clean the tooth, fix damaged areas, and get rid of the filling.”
“Filling?”, I wondered.
“Yes, you have a silver filling. How long has that been there?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t had a filling since I was a kid. It must be almost fifty years old.”
“I’d think so”, she said. “I don’t see too many silver fillings these days.”
As the anesthesia kicked in, my mind wandered. My first thought was I should hang on to the silver. Fluctuating within a ten dollar range, the spot price has floated sideways the last several years. But the minute I get rid of it is the moment it’ll soar.
Silver Linings
To distract myself from the picks, probes, and drills that were about to maul my mouth, I recalled another occasion when silver was extracted from something essential.
In 1964, a gallon of gas cost a quarter, which at the time was made mostly of silver. Six decades ago, two bits bought about a fifth an ounce of the metal that composed it (in today’s dollars, silver would cost 17 times as much).
The next year, silver was discarded from American coins. Since then, quarters and dimes have been nickel shells covering a copper core. Because they retain their value, earlier vintages are still bagged and stashed as “junk silver”…hidden in secret safes or “midnight gardens”.
A few years after the coins were clipped, President Nixon set the dollar adrift, severing the last link to its golden anchor. For half a century, its purchasing power sank. The new ersatz currency bought less of what people wanted. But, over time, legitimate money held its own.
In real terms, it’s cheaper today to fill our cars than when Kennedy was killed. An ounce of silver bought four or five gallons of gas then, but more than seven today.
This makes sense. It’s what money is supposed to do. Oil is more abundant and refining more efficient, so our ability to buy it should’ve increased.
In a free market with honest money, prices should gradually decline as productivity goes up. That’s how civilization becomes more prosperous.
But since the dollar was forced off its sturdy foundation, ten times as many bogus bucks are needed to fill a tank. As with most things, gas is harder for average Americans to afford because they have fewer real resources with which to buy it. Like sugar on enamel, fake money wears down real wages and corrodes genuine wealth.
Increases in nominal pay offer the illusion of additional income. But rising wages come in decaying dollars that have already lost their bite. People’s pay goes up only after most other prices already did.
This is what inflation does. It’s a surreptitious thief that slowly robs the many while enriching a few. That’s the raison d'être of any counterfeiting ring.
But the last few years, the swindle has become more apparent, and picked up speed. That shouldn’t be a shock. When governments sabotage supply chains and conjure trillions in mock money, prices tend to rise. And almost all of them have, by much more than official statistics suggest.
A dozen eggs cost fifty cents the year dimes and quarters were stripped of silver. Today, the average carton cost almost ten times as much…and 50% more than just four years ago, before the lockdowns. Gas prices are 30% higher…and that’s after falling 20% from last year!
Stale Beer
And it’s not just food and fuel. Rents are thru the roof. Healthcare costs an arm and a leg. Home and auto premiums go up so fast that insurers will probably create new policies to cover the increases.
It’s not that things we need have become more precious; it’s that what we buy them with has been debased. That’s the nature of fiat fraud.
Central bankers concoct currency, feed it to their friends, and mulct the hapless saps (us) who get the new money last. The best beer goes to those nearest the tap. As subsequent rounds flood the economy, the bitter brew gets watered down.
When late recipients finally get a sip, they’ve already been thoroughly soaked. Those with access to the speakeasy benefit by the buzz. The suckers outside receive stale ale. Afterward, they get stuck with the bill, and suffer a hangover.
Then the bartender tells them they’re getting richer and aren’t really sick. Everything is terrific. They’re just too stupid to notice.
The Worst Kind of Guesswork
This weekend The Washington Post had the gall to post a headline reading, “Inflation has fallen. Why are groceries still so expensive?” I’d attribute this propaganda to tone deafness or stupidity if I didn’t think it were malicious.
Government officials and their media mouthpieces pump shady “statistics” to keep us numb to inflation central bankers inflict. Then they blame us when we feel the pain!
To say “inflation has fallen” is clearly a lie. And a particularly preposterous one, because everyone knows it isn’t true. Prices may be rising less rapidly than last year (then again, they may not be). But they’re still going up.
If you go from zero to sixty in five seconds, then sixty to seventy in the same period of time, it doesn’t mean you’ve slowed down. This is obvious to anyone who eats, drives, seeks shelter, buys insurance, books a trip, or gets sick.
The price of almost everything has risen rapidly, and the increases compound. This year’s “reduced” 3% increase is on top of last year’s 6% spike, which was upon the 10% lift the year before. The rate of increase may vacillate. But the trajectory is clearly up.
As recent years reminded us, the worst guesswork is the type that pretends to be “scientific.” Leaving aside substitution and hedonic manipulation that monkeys with the numbers, there’s no aggregate “price level” that’s meaningful to measure.
Every good or service is used (or not) to different degrees by each individual. Each product has its own cost, which shifts and swings for millions of reasons and at varying rates. It’s ridiculous to derive a “rate of inflation” from some arbitrary index. And it’s particularly absurd to put a decimal point on it.
Statistical Farce
Most government “statistics” are a farce. Not because they aren’t factual, but because they aren’t truthful. It’s not that the numbers are “wrong.” But they’re mostly meaningless, and often misleading.
Along with inflation and unemployment, few are more flawed than GDP. This week came the initial guess for Q4 of last year. It was, as economist Peter St Onge described it:
“a blowout. The kind of blowout that only a $2.7T government deficit can buy while the private economy crumbles around it. Another couple blowout GDP reports like this and Americans will be living under an overpass.”
GDP assumes all spending is equally good. It makes no distinctions about what’s being bought or whether its beneficial. It’s biggest flaw is that it includes government spending as “output” when that’s obviously an albatross.
If anything, the government “contribution” should be subtracted. In Q4, GDP rose $300B, in exchange for $834B of additional government debt. Each dollar of “growth” puts Americans (present and future) $2.50 deeper into hock.
Essentially, as St Onge put it, GDP is measuring “the pace at which we’re going Soviet, replacing private wealth with government waste.” This robbery and waste would be impossible without sham money monopolized by the State.
But if we’re the losers in this nefarious scheme, who are the winners? Which crooks, connivers, and cronies get the fresh money used to loot us later? And what do they do with it?
As I started considering that question, the drilling stopped. A temporary crown was installed and I was good to go. We’ll have to expose the beneficiaries of the racket later this week.
With half my face feeling inflated, I pulled myself from the chair, and toward the door. I was handed an invoice, another reminder that groceries aren’t the only essentials that have catapulted in price.
But I had to pay it. Without teeth, groceries aren’t much good.
JD