Just about every major movement towards Utopia always has the same kind of lingo attached to it. The most prominent term thrown about is that of ‘progress’. Heck, most Leftists like to refer to themselves as ‘progressives’ although the legacy of the original progressive movement was not what I consider to be progress. It may be the beginning of the end.
These days, the goal of the central planners is to progress towards a wealthier state. This is the primary function of economics in government: to state the progress that has been made. The problem is, it is difficult to tell which is real wealth generation and what is inflationary, given the metrics the holy prophets of government use (may tax breaks be upon them).
Inflation in and of itself is not wealth generation. It’s just the increase in currency within the system. Think of it as applying compound interest on the means by which most transactions are made between individuals. What costs 100 dollars one year costs 134.39 in 10 years, which is not a 30% increase but a 34.39% increase. When you add this up over several decades, it gets monstrously exponential. In 45 years (about your working lifetime), the increase is 378.16%. This is all based on the assumption that inflation is a constant 3%.
In practical terms, all inflation really does is make stuff cost more, eat your savings, and make banks richer due to the fractional reserve banking system. While the merits of the latter are debatable, The former two cause problems for retirement. Thank the Constitution that we have Social Security, right?
Given that the GDP and CPI are used to calculate economic growth, but also are affected by excessive money printing, that leaves one last economic indicator to tell us how things are going: unemployment. Yet this term is highly subjective and the definitions vary. There are, in fact, at least six different ways they go about this but the main one is the U3 measurement. The trouble is, it’s also hard to define what kind of unemployment is bad versus what unemployment is good. Yes, you can have people who are unemployed but at the same time able to sustain themselves without outside ‘help’ from the government. I daresay that anyone who isn’t on some kind of welfare program is probably in a good unemployment situation.
But we never hear about those kind of people. There are millions of able-bodied Americans who can work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will or even should. My wife’s desire is to be a stay at home mom someday. That’s certainly a great example of being productively unemployed because she would add economic value to my household.
In any case, I am wondering where this economic progress is suppose to lead. We are all destined to die at some point and many of us won’t live long enough to see a better world tomorrow. You could say that you’re leaving a better world for your children, but most of you would be lying. The truth is, I cringe whenever someone talks about progress because I know that such a term is more subjective than unemployment.
And still, to this day, many people haven’t learned their lessons. In the past two centuries, the promoters of ‘progress’ have always managed to accomplish the opposite for everyone but themselves.
I’ll take the chaos of liberty over the poverty of Utopia, thank you very much.