> Unemployment weakens governments. Inflation kills them. That’s what a government official from Brazil once told me. But in rich countries, including the Unite

> Unemployment weakens governments. Inflation kills them. That’s what a government official from Brazil once told me. But in rich countries, including the United States, the politically destructive power of inflation had been forgotten. Standard policy tools left us unprepared, and the Biden administration was slow to fight back. D'oh, yes. (Though hardly the only lesson.) Ya' know - Biden was around back in the late 1970's - he shoulda been able to remember how much high inflation helped Presidents Ford and Carter to get re-elected. Right? <cough/> Cripes, Biden was already in his late 20's by 1971 - when President Nixon's heavy-handed war against inflation (nation-wide price freezes by Executive Order, among other things) made his position on inflation quite clear. A year or so later, Pres. Nixon was re-elected - winning over sixty percent of the popular vote. Gosh, what a terrible thing to happen... Or - maybe Ol' Joe has long since lost those memory marbles? Or maybe Pres. Biden was just being a proper member of the modern Democratic Party - where doing anything more than pretending to care about the little people, a little bit, for just for a month or few before each election, would have marked him as some sorta weirdo creepy loser, who was "obviously not one of us Democrats"? Still, you'd think that any bright young Democratic advisor who'd taken a good history course or few coulda warned them. Oops!, wait. History is one of those "non-STEM" subjects - that colleges are busy phasing out - isn't it? /rant