There is no question that things have gotten more expensive in the US, but this is also true of other countries as well (Germany 8.5%, Peru 8.6%, Spain 5.5%, Japan 4%, US 6.5% or so, this is as of the end of last month). Up until recently the world had an economic trifecta but COVID changed that:
- Cheap capital (i.e. low interest rates, not anymore)
- Cheap labor (mostly China. Mexico is actually becoming cost competitive with China as China becomes more expensive. I think that we are currently politically too short sighted to see that opportunity...)
- Cheap energy. COVID affected demand which affected production, at least in the US production has mostly recovered but markets are tight, specially with part of Russia's production out of the game.
No single person had the ability to control all three across the world at the same time. If so, I would like to understand how that was the case... It is true that the economic support provided in the US aggravated the situation and this started before the current administration assumed office. The strong job market has kept the economy from stagnating as a result of inflation so we may have a way out of this.
I find it a double standard that it is OK for the insults to travel in only one direction; have someone with a dissenting opinion and they generally get squashed. The comment I made about age was intentional, I was just assigning a label without really explaining what it meant and it seems that some did not like it. In case you are wondering what I meant, the word that comes to mind is opinionated. It appears that people took it to mean far worse. And we are the ones called snowflakes...
Regarding the balloon, the US has fairly sophisticated ECM capabilities so I am pretty sure that they were able to monitor and gather intelligence based on its transmissions and potentially jam it as well. This is a game that has been going on for a long time. The US is not naive to this. Letting it fly over the US provided for bad optics but I am not convinced that our national security was affected by it. China is probably more concerned about the new bases that the US will have access too than the shooting down of the balloon. The US will now we have two bases, each within 200 mile range of Taiwan: one NE and the other SE. of the island. They were also not pleased when Japan decided to increase their military spending to about 2% of the GDP. Japan actually has more economic leverage in the region than China: ~230B in foreign investment at 1% interest vs. ~ 150B at 4% interest for the Chinese. This is a real threat to them.