[OldGoatCPO]

The biggest problem with the fools entrenched in DC both elected and employed, is their inability or laziness to look at the downstream consequences of their policies and their knee jerk reactions to the adverse reactions their policies create. If Congress passes a 10 page bill, it will turn into a thousand pages of guidelines, regulations and instructions when the bureaucracy is done with it. Your analogy of the spider web is dead on. Thomas Sowell refers to this as “stage one thinking”. Each government department wants control of it's territory and does not even look at how a regulation will impact another Federal Agency. Hence the spider web. Our government, regardless of who is in charge, is like Basel cell cancer. The damage to the skin was caused 10 years or more prior to the appearance of the cancerous cell. Public policy in our country is the same, a constant attempt to eradicate problems DC created decades ago. I did not agree with some of Trump's policies, but I understood his hands were somewhat tied by previous administrations and an entrenched bureaucracy. Where Trump could he fought back and had some success, but like Basel cells, past bad policies just keep growng new problems. Best solution I can see at this point is to divest more power from the Feds to the States.

I need to look into the deflationary vs inflationary aspects of our economy before I fall on one side or the other, but I do know this one thing. The people about to be body slammed by the current administration's fiscal disasters are the the working poor who voted for Biden. If you are making $14.50 (going rate in our area right now) per hour to work at Arby’s, in real economic terms I would guesstimate you are making the equivalent of $12.50 an hour just two years ago. At the current rate of inflation, you would need $20 per hour to comfortably afford rent, gas, food and utilities. The working poor, predominantly Black and Hispanic workers will be the hardest hit by either inflation or deflation. The next group will be those Gen Z and Millennial workers out of college and finding good jobs out of reach. I lived through Carter, this economy is already looking to be far worse.

[econjack]

I’ve told this before, but the gov’t has no reason to be efficient. A grad school friend of mine when to work for a relative new agency in DC back in the mid-60’s. After a few months there, the director came through and told everyone to stop processing their work...let it pile up in their in-boxes until he said otherwise. Several days later, there was a “surprise” visit by a Congressional oversight committee and a couple of GAO workers. His director pleaded: “See how overworked we are! I need more workers!”

Really?

In DC your invitation to black tie affairs is directly proportional to the number of people under your control. My friend worked for the newly-formed EPA.