Average Joe

Inflation is this nasty trend in the American economy where the value of money decreases, usually due to decisions made by our government to pacify our concerns, both as individuals and businesses, by stuffing money into our mouths.

It happens like this: Americans groan about the value of the dollar going down, the executive branch of the government sends everybody $600 that was borrowed from China. Inflation increases as more and more money is dumped into the market.
The value of the dollar goes down.

Two huge mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, get dropped to their knees after their flagrant irresponsibility and disregard for the well being of people to whom they have loaned millions of dollars. So the government throws more (borrowed) money under the crumbling foundations.

The value of the American dollar goes down. The Bureau of Labor statistics reports that $1,000 in 1998 would buy what $1,344.09 would buy today. That’s roughly a 33 percent change over 10 years.  Dr. Don Holley of the Boise State University Economics Department chair gave an estimate that the accrued interest in a standard savings account would be somewhere around a paltry $344. That would mean that Joe’s money would have been just as good sitting under his mattress, that is if the feds would keep their hands off.

Aside from my enraged frustration at these inherently fallacious and unconstitutional actions of the government, I am irked by a stinging concern for the American public. Therefore, I want to introduce someone. His name is Joe.

Joe and I are concerned about average people. According to census.gov, there is approximately a one in three chance that Joe is between 20 and 34 years old, and that the likely annual income for Joe is $46,326. Also according to census.gov, there is approximately a 75 percent chance that Joe is white and a 49 percent chance that Joe is male.

It’s infuriating to know that the money Joe might have saved in 1998 just after high school is worth less than 70 percent of its original value.

Dr. Holley says that “the transition of ownership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be a seamless one.  We’ll continue paying our mortgages and life will go on.”

Despite this optimism, I still doubt the stability of our government and, by proxy, our dollar.  It’s just too much involvement.  “The euro has emerged as a strong alternative to the dollar,” Holley said. “But that’s not a bad thing.”  I see his point of the capitalist ideal at work on a global scale.

But as the United States decides when, where and how it should most effectively take its role, Joe and people just like him are suffering, not relishing the consequences.

So why do we allow the government to continually decrease the value of our money, which could be considered the quantification of our lives, by funding interventionist wars, sticking their nose in a so-called “free market,” and stuffing garbage down our throats telling us everything will be ok?

These are Joe’s questions. And they’re my questions. The government does not have the right to steal our lives out from under us by enforcing bloated taxes and flooding the market.

We don’t want a lullaby, we want the truth and we want action.

JACOB MORRIS
ARBITER JOURNALIST

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