The Moral of the Story

Rents out of reach, compounding errors and a golden thread to follow...

Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Dublin, Ireland...

As Mick, our old stone-mason pal, put it, one stone leads to the next one. And it’s always the next stone you have to worry about. 

Here’s the Washington Post, with the latest news:

“Kiara Age moved in less than a year ago and now it’s time to move again: Rent on her two-bedroom apartment in Henderson, Nevada, is rising 23 percent to nearly $1,600 a month, making it impossibly out of reach for the single mother.

Age makes $15 an hour working from home as a medical biller while also caring for her 1-year-old son, because she can’t afford child care. By the time she pays rent — which takes up more than half of her salary — and buys groceries, there’s little left over.

“I am trying to figure out what I can do,” said Age, 32, who also has an 8-year-old daughter. “Rent is so high that I can’t afford anything.”

Yes, dear reader, as all flesh sooner or later discovers: tomorrow is when the hangovers, bills, and regrets appear.  

Double Whammy

And here’s an old Diary Dictum: tomorrow doesn’t always bring the future you want or expect; more often, it brings the future you deserve.  

Poor Ms. Age is the victim of two bad situations – one, of her own making… the other made by America’s elite. Now, she is trying to lay her stone on a very rough patch of wall.

Taking care of children is difficult enough for a well-united couple, working on it together. Trying to take care of two children alone while also working to support them at a $15-an-hour job seems like asking for trouble.  

Nowhere does the Post dare to mention that the poor woman was in a tough bind already. Her apartment already cost her about $1,300 a month. $15 an hour is only about $2,500 a month… which meant that the apartment was already taking half her earnings.  

So… her lifestyle choices might be considered, ‘mistake #1.’

But wait. They won’t tell you this in the mainstream media; it would be ‘blaming the victim,’ they say; ‘dreadful, middle-class moralizing!’

“Lie down with dogs and you will get up with fleas,” say the old-timers. “Fix the roof when the sun is shining,” is their advice. “Leave a rake, upturned in the yard, and you are bound to step on it,“ they add.

Poor Ms. Age’s foot hurts.

Alas, that’s how the world works. There’s always a ‘moral to the story’ and you ignore it at your peril.   

Supply, meet Demand

Then, there’s ‘mistake #2’… 

According to the Washington Post, rents are rising 40% in Austin, Texas, 35% in New York, and 29% in Orlando.  

Where did that inflation come from? Nowhere?  

On the supply side…

Didn’t the Trump government declare a ‘state of emergency’ in March 2020?  Didn’t local governments ‘lock down’ much of their economies? Didn’t health authorities create a panic, in which even young healthy people – who were never in any real danger from the COVID – cowered in their houses?

And on the demand side…

During that time – when houses weren’t being built – didn’t the feds also add $5 trillion to the Fed’s balance sheet… and $12 trillion to America’s national debt – sending out ‘stimmie’ checks and PPP giveaway ‘loans?’

And didn’t the money supply – as measured by the Fed’s “M2” – go up 38% since the close of 2019?

And what would you expect? As night follows day… and as politicians betray their voters – what could be more predictable? What might be the moral of this story?

Inflation, of course. The Washington Post continues:

Average rents rose 14% last year, to $1,877 a month, with cities like Austin, New York and Miami notching increases of as much as 40%, according to real estate firm Redfin. 

Nowhere in the article is there a single word about how the feds caused the housing price inflation. Yesterday seems to only exist as a place to showcase evils the old-timers never thought of – inequality and racism.

As for tomorrow, not to worry… the Biden Team is on the case. It will salve the hurts of the homeless with… what else… more of other peoples’ money. And it will divert and distract the public from the real cause:

‘Are you homeless? Of course, it’s not your fault. And it’s not our fault either. It’s the fault of those awful racists!’

Biden has appointed a political hack and racism monger to head up its homelessness initiatives. Bloomberg:

Jeff Olivet will serve as the executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, an office that coordinates the work of 19 federal agencies to address the housing crisis.

Olivet is the cofounder of an anti-racist consultancy, Racial Equity Partners. He is also the former chief executive officer of the Center for Social Innovation (now C4 Innovations), a company that provides training and technical guidance for housing groups and social providers to confront racism and other systemic issues. Olivet has experience working directly with homeless people as a street outreach worker, case manager and housing coordinator.

Will there be consequences? Of course. But maybe not those the Biden administration hoped for.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

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