As the election looms just ahead, it seems that inflation is the penultimate”kitchen table” issue that is rising in importance to voters.

It began with the Federal Reserve publicly stating they wanted inflation above 2%. This was given academic sanction by the Democrats adopting Modern Monetary Theory, which purports that deficits don’t matter and that the government can simply print the money it needs for expenditures.   We have reviewed this literature at some length.

As inflation began to surge, the Democrats said it was “transitory“, and would go away soon.

Then President Biden say there was “zero inflation.” He did this with a clever sleight of hand. Noting that there was no month-to-month change in the data in one particular month, he said inflation was zero. This is like saying it is 110 degrees in Phoenix today, the same as it was yesterday, so therefore there is zero heat in Phoenix during the summer. His silly Press Secretary repeated the claim.

But political rhetoric and statistical tomfoolery can’t erase the reality that most people are experiencing in their lives. Simply trying to fill up the tank of the car, buying some hamburgers, paying the rent, or looking at the electric bill quickly and loudly informs voters that there is inflation and it is very serious. Voters are justifiably furious.

In our Arizona Senate race, Senator Mark Kelly, no doubt informed by staff of the polling data concerning inflation concerns, has said he understands how bad inflation can impact families. In a recent interview with AZ Central, he expresses his deep concern and empathy.

This is sort of admitting that he now understands the effect inflation has on people, but he does not understand the cause of inflation and the direct role he played in creating it.

A better way to think of inflation is not that prices are rising, but that the value of money is falling.  It takes more pieces of paper or more electronic digits to buy the same standard of living.

Inflation further acts like a compound interest curve in reverse. Remember the rule of 72. Divide the number 72 by the interest rate you are receiving, and you can get a close estimate as to what level your investments will grow. For example: if you receive a rate of return of 6% compounding, your investment will double in 12 years. Likewise, if the inflation rate persists in the current 9% range, the purchasing value of your investments (if they are held constant) will fall in half in purchasing power in just 8 years.

The current level of inflation, while not “runaway”, is still high enough to do immense damage to the wealth of consumers and businesses. At current rates, a person retiring today will have his investments drop in half in just eight years. As the value of your investments erodes so does the income those investments can generate.

Inflation destroys the standard of living of people, especially if they are retired and on a fixed income. For those still working, they must fight to stay up with inflation, much like a gerbil on a running wheel. Even if they succeed in doing so, their standard of living is lower than it would otherwise be.

There is only one entity that can depreciate the value of money and that is the United States federal government. It and its agencies (primarily the Federal Reserve) have a monopoly on the issuance of money and control fiscal policy (government spending) and monetary policy. They control interest rates and they regulate the creation of credit through the banking system that they supervise.

So it would seem Senator Kelly understands the pain of inflation, but does not understand its cause.

The cause, of course, is him and his fellow politicians who have voted for the wild spending and huge deficits that are part of Biden’s economics. If he is looking for the cause, simply looking at himself while shaving his head would be a good start.

Expressing concern about something you inflict on others perhaps is a good political ploy, but it dodges responsibility.

Voters need to hold those responsible for creating too much money while passing legislation that throttles production.

Kelly voted for the ill-named Inflation Protection Act and all the other big spending legislation pushed by Biden and Chuck Schumer.  The Democrats admit the Act was named as a ploy, as the content of the legislation really is a huge environmental bill designed to fight the false claims about “climate change.”

The government poured almost $5 trillion dollars into the economy when supply chains were almost shut down.  They blew up the money supply by almost 40%, the largest bulge in American history.

With the Covid lockdowns and a regulatory jihad against business in general, and then passing legislation that exploded Federal spending, it created the classic inflationary setup: too much spending (money) chasing too few goods. Government can create money (which creates demand) but the government can’t print oil, crops, or semiconductors (supply).

Democrats have done everything they can to destroy the energy industry and replace it with untried and untested replacements. The result is rising fuel costs, utility bills, food costs, and transportation costs. The escalation of energy costs is a direct result of government policy supported by Mark Kelly.

And now Kelly and his Democrat allies go about the country empathizing with the pain voters feel, as if inflation were a plague visited upon us by space aliens.

No Senator, you supported the policies that created this mess by voting almost 100% with Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer.

Spare us the crocodile tears. You are responsible for this mess and don’t try to dodge the responsibility for it.