Thursday, April 06, 2023
Is the cost of living leap caused by excessive government spending?
It is conventional economics to say it is. If a government prints a lot of new money to finance a big increase in their spending, it must devalue each individual dollar. There will be more dollars chasing the same amount of goods and services so prices must go up to ration out the available goods and services. It's pretty simple logic.
But Leftists don't like that logic. They like to think that governments can spend as much as they like as long it is in a good cause. They just ignore the economics of the matter.
But a prominent Leftist economist has come to their rescue. Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel prize winner and one of the many Jews who support Leftist causes.
I am referring to an academic article under the title "The Causes of and Responses to Today’s Inflation". It is here:
In it, economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Ira Regmi argue that excessive government spending is NOT the cause of our current inflation. It is dated December 2022 so there should have been some critique of it by now but I can find none. So I thought I might note what I think is a basic problem with it.
For a start, nobody disputes that cost-push factors have had a significant role. Government lockdowns greatly disrupted supply chains and thus drove up shortage-driven prices. And the sanctions in response to Vladimir Putin's war were a further huge supply chain limitation.
But was that all that there was to it? Stiglitz & Co. say it was and they justify that by saying that consumption during the the recent inflationary period has not been high. They say: "Real personal consumption, even after recovering from the depths of the pandemic, was only slightly above trend and not commensurate with the level of inflation seen during the same time."
He is here using absolutes rather than relativities. The demand might have been subdued in absolute terms but that fails to take account of the already mentioned supply deficiencies and their price consequences. That demand remained at or a bit above previous levels DESPITE the higher prices and poor availability of some goods, shows that cost push pressures were not the only influence at work. We also have to look at people's RESPONSE to the cost push pressures. And when we do that we see that demand was in fact high in the circumstances. And what pressure kept that demand surprisingly high? Demand pull, that good old profligate government spending and its usual effect of creating high demand
Stiglitz tries to get government spending off the hook as a cause of inflation but we see that government spending did have an expansionary effect on demand if we look at demand in context.
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COVID-19 Vaccine Injured: Left Alone, in Often, Dire Declining Health, Mounting Debt & Absolutely No Help from Government
Most recently, KOMO News, a Seattle-based ABC Television affiliate owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the largest and most diversified broadcast companies in America, drills into this crisis, covering some of the devastating challenges faced by individuals identified as COVID-19 vaccine injured. From debilitating injuries to mounting debt and the specter of bankruptcy, the government offers no real help.
Introducing local case stories of patients injured in the Pacific Northwest region and beyond, Brooke Conrad with the National Desk reports that out of 12,000 COVID-19 vaccine-related injury or death-related claims with the U.S. government under its horribly broken Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), absolutely none have been compensated for as of March 1, 2023, while 23 have been deemed eligible for compensation but not paid. The reporter reminds the reader that 300 have been denied claims associated with the dysfunctional vaccine injury scheme used during the national public health emergency.
As TrialSite has reported since early in the pandemic, the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) offers industry and the vaccine administration supply chain near universal immunity except for some extremely difficult-to-prove exceptions. It turns out, industry refused to develop vaccines unless elected officials years ago voted to include universal liability waivers.
So, despite the acceleration of novel mRNA and viral vector technology and the government’s absolute protection of industry, the only thing protecting consumers is the “deeply flawed” CICP, and the track record is awful. Conrad reports that from 2010 through 2021, the program only compensated 6% of all non-COVID-related claims, or 29 out of 491 claims totaling $6 million in payouts. Most of the claims involved the H1N1 vaccine.
Summarizing the program’s impact is Renee Gentry, Director of the Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic at George Washington University Law School:
“The countermeasures program is basically a black hole. It’s your right to file and lose. I don't think it was ever anticipated to handle the number of vaccinations that have happened under COVID.”
Select COVID-19 vaccine injured stories
The recent piece from the mainstream media introduces a handful of COVID-19 vaccine injury stories such as Steve Wenger, who eventually became paralyzed from the waist down for a time from the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. Mr. Wenger now finds himself deep in a financial hole due to the circumstances. Only very expensive IVIg infusions twice per month plus Rituximab every six months has helped.
Another person injured by the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was introduced--Michelle Zimmerman. Vaccinated in March 2021, Zimmerman experienced severe pain shooting down her arm just five minutes after the jab. Her tongue and throat swelled up for about 20 minutes leading to a “harrowing cascade of other adverse events.” This COVID-19 vaccine-injured patient was ultimately diagnosed with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (brain damage triggered by lack of oxygen or blood flow).
Facing mounting financial losses, over $400,000 as insurance repeatedly declined to cover many of her clinic visits, a combination of lost wages have led her parents, who were supposed to retire, to continue working to support their daughter. While Zimmerman filed a CICP compensation case in October 2021, she wasn’t assigned a case number until January 2023, when she received ongoing conflicting messages from CICP.
TrialSite has supported COVID-19 vaccine-injured group React19, the largest COVID-19 patient advocacy group in the United States if not the world. With over 20,000 identified members, Chris Dreisbach heads up the organization’s lead affairs department.
Himself injured by the Pfizer vaccine in March 2021, he since then struggled with a diagnosis including chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuritis which has led to involuntary muscle spasms, modified gait, back pain and a headache disorder called occipital neuralgia not to mention brain fog and electrical pulses from head to toe.
The React19 legal counsel went on the record with Ms. Conrad: “Without having their experts’ fees paid, the COVID vaccine-injured hands are absolutely tied behind their backs.” He concluded, “These cases often come down to the battle of the experts.”
On the prospect of CICP and its standard of proof to secure vaccine injury award—difficult to say the least, what with so much research still left essentially leading to that conflict among the experts. But the highly funded certainly have the advantage.
In another case covered by Conrad, just 30 minutes after Cody Flint received his Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, the pilot experienced debilitating pain in the form of a “severe, stabbing headache.” Just two days later, Flint, who flies crop dusting missions, nearly blacked out in the air! He underwent two ear surgeries, and his physician has gone on the record that the injuries are likely linked to the COVID-19 vaccine. With no insurance at the time, Flint faces a mountain of debt.
Devoid of humanity
Flint’s claim was ultimately denied. Along the way, he provided testimony—at the year mark awaiting determination from CICP. His case was discussed during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing: Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-MISS directly addressed the matter with Biden administration Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, asking:
“Can you tell me what you’re going to do to address the thousands of claims currently in the backlog at HHS, and what you are doing to improve the transparency of the CICP process so that Americans like Mr. Flint are properly compensated in a reasonable time period?”
The response speaks for itself, as Becerra switched the topic, avoiding the issue at hand, declaring lots of Americans suffer from long COVID, and that fraudsters are misappropriating money designated for COVID-19 purposes. The Biden HHS head expressed absolutely no empathy, no real humanity—just a bureaucrat protecting the program despite the reality of his agency’s mission statement:
“The mission of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health and social services.”
Targeted transition
As reported by KOMO News a movement grows to push for the COVID-19 vaccines to be transferred from CICP to the primary vaccine injury program known as the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program or “VICP.” Operating via a court process rather than an administrative one, VICP covers much of the routine scheduled vaccines reports Conrad. While compensation claim success is certainly higher than CICP, critics lament that VICP is a horribly broken system as well.
But with no real options COVID-19 vaccine injured advocates push on that something is better than nothing. For example, from 2006 to 2021, Conrad states that the program compensated almost three-quarters of all adjudicated petitions (7,418 out of 10,342) paying out about $4.9 billion since the program onset in 1988.
The largest COVID-19 vaccine injured organization network, React19 provides a breakdown comparison of the two programs.
KOMO News reports three “hurdles” faced by advocates that seek to transfer the COVID-19 vaccine injured from CICP to VICP, including 1) vaccine placed on routine CDC recommended schedule (this has been cleared), 2) Congress must pass an excise tax to fund the compensation program and 3) the standing Secretary of Health and Human Services needs to add the COVID-19 vaccines to the Vaccine Injury Table, delineating both injuries and conditions associated with the vaccines.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH) Also here
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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