When the world started to shut down in response to the pandemic in Spring 2020, the long-term ramifications were known commodities. There would be increases in mental health issues and suicides, drug use and overdoses, and malnutrition (but all you can eat long-term health issues). We have seen similar incidents in economic downturns of the past, but most of those (with Soviet exceptions) were not purposeful actions by the government. As late as 2019, they were still counting deaths due to the Great Recession. But we were told that we were putting the economy over lives, despite no evidence that lock-downs work and plenty of evidence that lock-downs kill.
The entire charade, and it was a charade, was predictable. Even more predictable were the short-term supply chain issues, which are directly related to the long-term supply chain issues we are currently experiencing. In turn, we are currently experiencing record levels of inflation (obviously, supply chain issues are not the only input here, but they are an important one).
The inherent problem of inflation, from a policy perspective, is not the rise in price. For the system to run, it is actually not overly important whether prices go up or down. No, the most important aspect of inflation is in expectations. From expectations, everything else follows.
Contractually, expectations usually show up in cost of living adjustments. If a worker expects that prices will go up by 2%, then that can be accounted for. But if workers have no idea how much prices will rise by, then social problems, labor disputes as an example, begin to occur. Worse, if prices are rising sharply with high variance, other social problems like crime become more prevalent. Thus, it is better for the system to have relatively steady prices or the expectation that price increases will be modest at worst. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is attempting to solve the problem of rising inflation without actually solving it. They announced that the consumer price index will be tweaked starting next month, and you can expect that tweak will magically result in an overall lower (and perhaps more stable) consumer price index. Managing expectations at its finest.
A constructive example of managing expectations can be found in Orwellian terms in 1984. Winston Smith, a records clerk in the Ministry of Truth, needed to update a categorical pledge indicating there would no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. In fact, the chocolate ration would drop from 30 to 20 grams per week. In the next chapter of the book, there was a demonstration thanking Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to 20 grams per week. As his comrades buy the propaganda, Winston is secretly left wondering if he was the only one that remembers the initial pledge.
Part of the power of controlling the narrative, in fact, is separating people and making them feel alone. Whether through gathering limits, censorship, or asking the useful idiots to be outright hostile to the current round of thought-criminals (the unvaccinated). Indeed, the most effective part of the passport system has been the power of peer pressure. People stopped getting vaccinated out of fear months ago, but missing a night out with the boys? What will they think? What will they say?
Of the many parallels with dystopian ‘fiction’ over the last couple of years, the most troubling is the real-time narrative changes. As if the past never really happened, and we are all making a grave error of memory. This is best reflected in the mask narrative, the herd immunity narrative, the booster narrative, the passport narrative, and, soon, the inflation narrative.
While we may understand the last two years have been, to put it in Orwellian terms, “the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another”, that is little solace when all of those around us continue to trip over themselves to buy the next lie. But, hey, at least inflation will become manageable in January!
I like the way you wrote "While we may understand the last two years have been, to put it in Orwellian terms, “the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another”, that is little solace when all of those around us continue to trip over themselves to buy the next lie." It's amazing how much each new lie costs us not only monetarily, but with loss of freedom, emotional wear and tear, the ability to trust the dirt bags running the show...