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Full Version: Why Inflation
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Most people don't seem to understand that we are entering an apocalypse. It's going to be very unpleasant for a very long time, and only the hand of God can shorten our suffering. It's not easy to understand this stuff. Sometimes it helps when you can find someone who understands economics to spell it out for you. I like this article for simplifying why inflation is not temporary.

The quick summary is that our past few decades of low priced production was based on off-shoring the production of certain items that would cost too much to manufacture here. We took advantage of lower production costs in places like China, Mexico and Pakistan. Well, after decades of that kind of thing, those countries are no longer so cheap on production costs. Hosting our production has raised their internal prosperity greatly, but that means raising prices on us. In other worlds, our western prosperity has crept into every corner of the world, except those places where the population simply won't work in factories reliably.

At the same time, political instability is shutting down a lot of trade. Furthermore, the culture here at home isn't very conducive to bringing the production back. Today's kids aspire to be social media stars and influencers. We have a serious labor shortage in the US, as the lock-downs have convinced the older folks to not bother. This won't change until the market begins to offer better wages, and even that might not help. Either way, the cost of production here is through the roof, so a lot production is going to grind to a halt.

The market for comfort goods has already begun to collapse. More and more of the available labor and resources will go to bare necessities. This is going to roll back all the prosperity of the last century all over the world. Sometimes you need to understand how it works; it's not enough to plaster blame on the evil elite. Yes, a lot of this is according to plan, but making too much of that can distract you from considering how you will survive. It keeps you from thinking about how you can glorify the Lord in the midst of tribulation.

Oh, and we are headed for a mega-drought in the next few years, according to NOAA. Most of the western states, central plains, and parts of the southeast will feel it.
Not that NOAA would be wrong necessarily, but I wonder how much of their predictions are based on bad climate change models? Even without a drought, things don't look good.
From what I understand, the drought prediction isn't based on climate change modeling, but more old-fashioned observation of things like El Nino/La Nina. It could still turn out to be wrong, though.
Since fall of 2007, I have been reporting precipitation or lack thereof on a daily basis (so for over 5000 days).  I have a rain gauge that can hold up to 11 inches.  Should we get an inundation of rain in a short period of time, I report it immediately so as to alert local weather folks of possible impending floods. That "instant reporting" is very helpful especially during times when we are having a hurricane because life threatening floods are very real and need to be observed and warnings issued in real-time.

With this reporting which is being contributed to by thousands of volunteers across the country, it makes drought predictions or probabilities easier based on patterns built on actual data compiled over decades.  We report rain, snow, hail, ice or zero.

The program to which I contribute is CoCoRaHS  (https://www.cocorahs.org/)  which was started by a group of professors at Colorado State University in 1998.  It has been fun and something I totally enjoy being a part of.  Climatologists and meteorologists across the country study the data and I have no doubt find it very useful.

That likely contributed amongst other things to decent predictions that are based on precipitation records and patterns.

That's my two cents worth.