If inflation runs out of control, which is a very real possibility, the whole of our politics, indeed the whole of our culture, can be destroyed. We need not look far to see the example of Venezuela or deep into history to see the example of the Weimar Republic to know that inflation will ravage any society. It certainly makes a mockery of savings. It topples governments or they survive only as tyrannies.
If the bubble that few doubt presently envelops us bursts, one of the reasons will probably be inflation. Indeed, the fact that inflation is growing and the market looks topsy indicates that the future might be now. Depending on the rate and extent of inflation, that future looks frighteningly dystopian. The future might have elements of the worst of both worlds and appear as stagflation or it might simply prove to be a good old-fashioned massive depression.
The consequences will be revolutionary, our economy will fracture, our class and race balance will break down, rule of law will stressed if not abandoned, our national defense will weaken catastrophically, our allies will turn their faces from us as they cut their own deals with China, a strongman, a demagogue might emerge. The whole rest of the history of this century could turn on inflation.
At some point this bubble will break and that will affect the fortunes of the Republican Party and the conservative movement depending, perhaps, on who is in power when it happens. Democrats are not likely to let a good crisis go to waste but Republicans are likely to dither-one need only compare Herbert Hoover to FDR. Between now and 2024, with the Republicans presumably in power in Congress, they will have much of the responsibility for recovery.
With Mike McConnell in charge, we will have less than inspiring leadership and few solutions other than tax cuts and more spending. After 2024, with hopefully Donald Trump or a staunch conservative in the White House, the whole responsibility will be on us. The politics of the rest of the century might well turn, as they did in the 20th century, on how that event coped with by the party in power.
There is no solution to this economic crisis about to befall us that is a vote winner. The FDR solution, which was no solution at all, was a vote winner. Every real solution is a choice for pain now vs. a choice for more pain later. That is a sale Republicans are not good at closing but one that Democrats will never attempt.
