Doesn't seem to me it has much to do with communism.

Take a look at a couple graphs.

Gross Domestic Product [fred.stlouisfed.org]

Production: Manufacturing: Total Manufacturing for United States [fred.stlouisfed.org]

Has government policy made much difference in GDP?

GDP tracked manufacturing until 2007. What happened in 2007?

First I want to say I wouldn’t completely trust the graphs to reflect reality because the government constantly changes the way the data is calculated. It is also important to understand that economics is not a science, it is more theory than substance.

Here is another chart showing the rate of inflation.

Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average  [fred.stlouisfed.org]

You may note that a relationship between inflation and the previous two charts doesn’t exist.

Inflation it turns out is more closely tied to government policy than economic performance. Why is that important? Because the effect of inflation isn’t evenly distributed across socioeconomic classes. Look at the cost of food and energy for example. Do the upper class use that much more food and energy than the lower classes? It turns out that when food and energy costs exceed that of all items you can see the impact on the lower classes is higher than those better off. For the lower classes almost all of their income goes to necessities. Now take a look at the Dow Jones averages.

Dow Jones - DJIA - 100 Year Historical Chart [macrotrends.net]

Here again government policy did have a significant effect. The important point is the lower classes don’t have the opportunity to offset the effects of inflation through investments. Up until about 1980 however the negative effects of inflation more or less tracked Dow Jones performance. After that they became decoupled especially during the Biden administration. What becomes clear is that how government policy benefits the wealthy is more accurately measured by the difference in the rate of inflation and investment performance. There is a lot of politics that distort the way the data is collected but some things are harder to hide than others.

Another thing the charts show is that government policy does significantly effect the manufacturing sector. Just like inflation that affects the lower classes more than those above them. If you study the charts carefully it looks as if there has been a war against the lower classes starting around 2007.

What is clear is that Reaganomics wasn’t that significant a change except for inflation. What happened after 2007 was.

You can manipulate the perceptions of people more easily than you can manipulate the data, it turns out. Give people a little bread and circuses and tell them you care about them and you can hide what you are really about.

The greatest wealth transfer in history happened under Obama and is now happening under Biden. But don’t be fooled, it is hidden in the data. It started with Carter. This chart doesn’t really capture it because as I said inflation affect the lower classes more than those above them but it is what they want to focus on that distorts it.

What the data reflects is in a way how little it matters who is in power. How could that be?

A centralized currency is not the problem. Thinking it is money is the problem.

America needs a Gen. Franco, too!