Although War Secretary Pete Hegseth poo-pooed reports about dire conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier as “fake, America-hating news,” the U.S. Navy finally confirmed that that eight of its personnel in the strike group attempted suicide during their Iran war deployment. Sailors on the carrier reported that fresh milk, fruit, and produce were often unavailable for months and meat spoiled in transit. They produced photos of food that would make even cafeteria lunch ladies retch.
Yet the Great and Powerful Oz on the Potomac instructs us on what to serve at home for dinner.
The Pentagon has never passed a complete audit. The one released in December was the eighth consecutive failure in a row, while the Deep State money manipulators in the Marriner Eccles building have missed their own inflation target for sixty-five months in a row.
Yet the St. Louis Fed offers us YouTube videos on How to Pay Down Credit Card Debt, and Budgeting 101 (“Making a budget is like planning a road trip for your personal finances”).
The self-described “very stable genius” in the White House was not able to contemplate that his elective war on Iran would see the Strait of Hormuz shut down and America’s security umbrella over the Persian Gulf states get pummeled. Which falls into the category of their business.
Yet his administration explains to us how to do our grocery shopping. Which falls into the category of our business.
It is arrogant, presumptuous, and insulting.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins offered the latest installment recently. Confronted with complaints about soaring beef prices, Rollins had a straightforward solution: “If beef is too expensive…you can eat chicken, pork, salmon, eggs.”
Or cake?
Thanks. American grocery shoppers never realized that there are price differences in food items.
“Let them eat chicken” captures an overly familiar Washington response to an affordability crisis. When Americans can no longer afford the things we once bought, we get lectured how to do without.
During the inflationary crisis of the early 1970s, when food prices were exploding—in 1973 wholesale farm and food prices were rising at an annualized rate of 56%—and Americans were furious about it, the Nixon administration highlighted cheaper alternatives. President Richard Nixon was portrayed as cutting back on expensive steaks and eating more chicken, fish, and leftovers. Yet Americans didn’t need to be told what to do; they were already doing what Washington fails to do. They were struggling to balance their budgets.
The Carter years brought another round of painful inflation and what became known as stagflation—low- or no-economic growth as an accompaniment to its affordability crisis. Bureaucrats urged Americans to change their buying habits and substitute cheaper foods as grocery prices raced higher. President Jimmy Carter wore a cardigan sweater on TV in the middle of winter to lecture Americans about where to set their thermostats (65°F during the day and 55°F at night).
Then he appointed a “chief inflation fighter,” Alfred Kahn, an economist with a PhD from Yale. Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Kahn was asked by network’s economics correspondent Irving R. Levine how he intended to take on inflation:
Mr. Levine: “In order to cure any illness, one has to diagnose the cause. What do you see as the principal cause of inflation?”
Professor Kahn: “I’m going to evade that question, because I don’t know what the principal cause of inflation is. The essence of what the President has proposed is a multi-faceted attack. I think that the problem of inflation is so deep-rooted in western society, can be attributed to such broad social causes, that I think for example the inflation we are experiencing in the United States today is in some important way related to the fact that I see people throw papers on the sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue when I walk to the subway. And it distresses me enormously. Or I see them walk on the grass. It has something to do with a sense of being members of a single society rather than, and as I have put it, and forgive me for repeating, 200 to 225 million people at perpetual war with one another.”
That should have been enough for the market value of a Yale PhD to plummet. Did the chief inflation fighter really learn in graduate school that inflation is all about broad social causes like stepping on the grass? Or did he know the truth but prefer to propagate a smokescreen of deceit to provide cover for the activities of his Washington patrons?
Then came the Biden-era inflation. Grocery prices rose dramatically, roughly 25% over four years, with meat hit particularly hard. Again, Americans heard about supply chains, corporate pricing, labor shortages, Vladimir Putin and other explanations. Candor about monetary policy was missing in action. But the advice remained familiar: shop differently, substitute products and learn to live with higher prices.
Now “let them eat chicken” is back once again.
As the war on Iran drives up the cost of living, Vice President J.D. Vance insists the administration is doing “everything we can” to keep prices down. How? The national debt crossed $40 trillion this year, with 29% of that red ink added during Trump’s watch.
Was there ever a time when Washington saw rising prices as feedback, evidence of its failed and corrupt monetary policies? Not in recent memory. It sees rising prices as a reason for the people who produce America’s wealth to tighten their belts. “Shut up,” they explain, “It’s for your own good. Have a drumstick.”
Washington has no business instructing the people how to cope with its debasement of the dollar. Instead it should be forthright about the cause of the problem. If it wanted to offer sound advice, it would instruct the citizens to protect themselves with gold and silver.
That offers protection because Washington can’t just print gold and silver.
