[bvw]

I agree that oil is cheap -- cheaper than water! A pint of water at the convenience store costs as much as a quart of oil. And at least one of the water bottles is pumped, filtered and filled at a plant up the street -- still it costs roughly twice as much as the oil that is pumped half the world away and shipped over thousands of miles of deep ocean.

Yet that misses the point. Oil, while cheap, is more expensive today than two years ago. And oil prices factor into every aspect of the economy. Yet it is ignored in inflation calculations -- the publized inflation figures are suspect. They are political numbers.

And I didn't say taxes were political -- I said that the year-to-year dollar adjustment figures were political.

Taxes are allocated politically, yet some level of tax is intrinsic to a market, and is truely part of the cost of a good. Just as oil at the well head can be from a cheap well or an expensive one -- the complete transaction on a good or service can be in tax-low or tax-high place, and that tax is part of the cost.

But, but, but ... since we are in 110% fiat money mode, and there is no gold, the ONLY real thing that values a fiat dollar is the tax rate on labor. In that regard -- in considering income taxes in a late fiat money economy, tax rate and money inflation are very much tied together.

And we -- as you say -- have less labor. "More productive", That can be very very inflationary.

[LS]

I simply disagree that anything not measured in "gold" is "fiat." That's baloney. Most commodities prices, while a little higher, show no serious indications of inflation, energy especially. Nor do interest rates, which I'm sure you would say are "political." That leaves you with ONLY gold, and, as I say, it doesn't give you a lot of basis to claim that prices are much higher today than 5-6 years ago.