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"A spectre haunts debates about governance: the idea of benevolent and efficient dictatorship. Where democratic leaders haggle, delay, and pander, the authoritarian ruler simply acts. Where elected governments bend to lobbyists and electoral cycles, a dictator [it's alleged] is in for the long haul. ...

"Beijing officials invoke it to explain the rise of China; climate activists to argue that the planetary emergency demands that we put democracy on pause; populists to suggest that current institutions are broken and that a fresh start and setting the popular will free requires a firm and unchecked hand. ...

"However, a large body of studies of how democracies and autocracies actually perform across regions, over centuries, and in domains ranging from economic growth to military effectiveness to environmental protection have questioned this story. They do not show autocracies to be superior—on the contrary, the autocratic temptation is, in most domains, a mirage, or even a trap. Not only are democracies morally preferable because they recognise the political equity and dignity of citizens; they also tend to work better. ... 

"Countries that successfully consolidate free and fair elections face substantially lower risks of civil war ... Citizens who can kick out the opposition at elections are less inclined to take to the streets with weapons.

"[D]emocracies have been accused of weakness in warfare. ... Yet the long-term record is unambiguous: since 1815, democracies have won more than 80 percent of the wars they have fought. ...

"Democratic institutions protect property rights in a way that encourages the private investment that drives productivity. And the open circulation of ideas across universities, a free press, and competitive markets is not a distraction from growth but one of its primary engines. Studies show that, on average, democracies enjoy a modest but robust long-run growth advantage over autocracies, and that this advantage strengthens with the quality and longevity of democratic institutions.

"More telling than average growth rates, however, is the frequency with which disasters strike. Unchecked political authority not merely fails to deliver growth; rather, it periodically produces catastrophes. Mao’s Great Leap Forward between 1958 and 1962 killed tens of millions through an entirely man-made famine, a consequence of ideological fantasy insulated from the real world. The Soviet collectivisation campaign produced similar horrors two decades earlier. Comparable disasters in democratic states are virtually unknown—not necessarily because democratic leaders are wiser or more virtuous, but because they face institutional constraints and public scrutiny that make disastrous policies impossible to sustain.

"The most advanced economies in the world are democracies. The handful of countries that have joined the ranks of wealthy, high-technology societies over the past century, including South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, and Ireland, made at least the final leap under democratic governance. Singapore is the sole exception to this rule. Autocratic regimes can mobilise resources to achieve middle-income status, as China has done. But the transition to a knowledge-based economy requires the rule of law, the protection of intellectual property, and the freedom to challenge received wisdom—all of which are systematically undermined under dictatorship. ...

"At a time when open societies face serious pressure from within and without, the temptation to admire their alternatives is understandable. But admiration is not a sound foundation for political judgment, especially not when it is based on a selective reading of the evidence. The autocratic temptation promises fortitude and efficiency—but too often, it only produces chaos and mismanagement; and, occasionally, it delivers disaster."

~ Jørgen Møller from his article 'The Myth of Authoritarian Efficiency'

Who is “struggling” financially, due to price inflation?

To answer that, we need to go behind the price inflation (a rise in the average price of goods and services) to its cause: monetary inflation (the government’s expansion of its fiat currency).

Aside from wars or natural disasters temporarily reducing supply, the only thing that can raise prices is government debasing its own money supply.

Why does everything cost 10 to 30 times more than it did when I grew up in the 1950s? That’s a huge rise, not a minor fluctuation.

Why does the hamburger that back then cost 25¢ hamburger now cost $2.50 to $3.00 at McDonald’s?

Why does the gallon of gas that cost 33¢then cost $4.00 today? And why is it that in 25 years, gas has not been below $1.00?

Why does a men’s white dress shirt that cost $5.00 in the 1950s cost $20 on clearance and $96 at Brooks Brothers?

Why is it that I had to go to Insert Symbols to find a “¢” symbol?

It’s not because the quantity of goods and services has dropped by a factor of 10 or 20. No, obviously the quantity of hamburgers, gasoline, shirts, and just about everything has not dropped but risen.

Is it the greed of businesses? Then greed is something added since the 1950s? And it’s capable of raising prices 20-fold? And the average family can and does pay twenty times more, simply because businesses demand it? Where do they get the money to pay 20 times more? What were they doing with all that money in the 1950s? Sitting on it?

Greed counts for nothing. The greed of the buyer is matched by the greed of the seller. Both want to get more for less. Both are limited by the law of supply and demand.

Here’s the key: in 1955, the median family income in the U.S. was $4,400.

Today those figures are $85,000 (Census bureau) to $103,000 (HUD).

Hugely more families have two wage-earners today, but so what? Cut the numbers in half and the growth in nominal income is still tenfold or more.

In 1955, there were only 267 individual tax returns filed in the United States with an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of $1 million or more. Today, 360,000 to 370,000 Americans made $1 million or more.

What percent of the US population earned less than $20,000 in 1955? 99%.

Only 1 in 100 were able to achieve the stratospheric income of $20,000.

What was the gold price in 1955? $35 per ounce. Today, it is over 100 times that ($4,215 to $4,233)

Prices are cheaper now than in 1955—in terms of gold.

An ounce of gold in 1955 would buy about 100 gallons of gas; today that selfsame ounce will buy 1,000 gallons.

In 1955, 500 ounces of gold bought an average middle-class house. Today, 500 ounces will buy four half-million dollar houses, And the houses will be bigger, and will have air conditioning and a two-car garage.

Paper money prices are about 20 times higher and gold prices are about 4 to 10 times lower.

The problem is with the government’s paper money.

Prices go up because the public, having ever more fiat money, bids them up.

So, who is “struggling” financially, due to price inflation? Those who don’t get the newly injected money fast enough–i.e., before other people who have the new money sooner bid up prices. (This is known as “the Cantillon effect,” after early 18th century economist Richard Cantillon.)

And, in the current inflation, the losers are those who didn’t buy hard assets early enough.

I said to Claude (Opus 4.8):

Inflation helps those who get the new money first and hurts those who get it last. So perhaps the complaints come from those late in getting the new money.

Claude responded:

The Cantillon effect is sound, and you’ve put your finger on a real channel. But I’d push on which version of “late” actually fits this episode, because the simplest reading — wage earners are last because wages adjust slowly — doesn’t match the 2020–2022 data, and the version that does fit is more interesting for your thesis.

Here’s the complication for the simple version. This monetary expansion was atypical. Normally new money enters through the financial system — banks, bond dealers, asset markets — and only later reaches wage earners, which is the classic case where workers are the late losers. But in 2020–21 a large share of the injection was fiscal and went straight to households: stimulus checks, expanded unemployment, the child credit. Money entered near the bottom, not only at the top. And the bottom of the wage distribution then did relatively well — that CAP piece concedes the lowest earners saw wages accelerate, and the broader research on the period documented real wage compression, with the bottom quartile gaining in real terms while the middle lagged. So “wage earners got the money last” is the part that fits worst. If anything the low-wage worker was unusually early this time.

The version that fits beautifully is the asset-price channel. Cheap money and suppressed rates inflated home and equity prices first — that’s pure Cantillon, the earliest recipients being those who already held the assets. Existing homeowners and stockholders captured the gains before consumer prices fully caught up. The people “late” in that chain aren’t wage earners generically; they’re the asset-less: renters, and the young who hadn’t bought in yet. They now face the inflated price level without ever having captured the asset gains that the early recipients pocketed. That maps precisely onto the two facts from before — housing is the loudest complaint, and the under-30s report the worst squeeze. They’re paying yesterday’s monetary expansion forward in the form of a home-price and rent level set by it.

And the textbook Cantillon loser — the saver on a fixed income holding cash, whose claim on goods is silently diluted — fits cleanly too. Retirees and savers got nothing early and absorbed the dilution. They’re genuinely “last,” in the strict sense that they never received new money at all; it just devalued what they held.

Two caveats so the framework doesn’t overreach. First, the current (2026) squeeze isn’t purely monetary anymore. Tariffs are a real relative-price shock layered on top — that’s a tax incidence story, not a money-injection-timing story, even if the felt experience is identical. Second, some of the constraint is physical, as we covered: housing supply genuinely lagged for structural reasons independent of the money. So I’d say your hypothesis is largely right but more precisely stated as: the complaints cluster among those late in the asset-price propagation and among fixed-income holders — not wage earners as such — with a non-monetary tariff-and-supply overlay that the Cantillon lens alone won’t.

The inflation is real. The struggles of the sacrificed portion of the population are real. And the cause is anti-capitalism: anti-capitalist ideas, leading to anti-capitalist opinion-leaders, leading to anti-capitalist government policies.

The solution? I can’t imagine.

Unless it’s capitalism. A system that takes the money supply out of the hands of the government.

​​​​​​​De-socializing money? Letting prices be determined by voluntary consent on a free market? Limiting government to protecting rights?

It can’t be that simple.

Or can it?

Hillary Clinton helped set the Russian Collusion hoax in motion.

She also repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the Russians helped Donald Trump defeat her in 2016.

You’d think those sizable stains might come up during an interview with the former First Lady. Yet have any major news outlets done anything of the kind to date?

The answer would be no.

That also appears to be the case with “The American Experiment.”

The new Netflix docuseries reportedly finds Clinton attacking the Electoral College as an “abomination.” That’s according to a preview of the series shared via Variety.

“Well, I personally think the Electoral College is an abomination,” says Hillary Clinton, adding, “For obvious reasons.”

Obvious, indeed.

It’s sad that Hollywooin in toto is doing little to honor the nation’s 250th birthday. No major movies will celebrate the milestone. The Left punished those considering a music extraganza tied to the birthday, forcing them to flee a patriotic concert.

You have to turn to outside the Hollywood gatekeepers for pro-America content. Think “Young Washington,” hitting theaters July 3, and a re-release of “Reagan” with new footage.

By Variety’s assessment, “The American Experiment” is far from rah-rah patriotric. A balanced look at America and its pros and cons is certainly reasonable.

Or, it might be another TDS affair – Trump Derangement Syndrome. Consider these quotes from the project’s director, Brian Knappenberger.

“The 2016 election also stands out because Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in the popular vote by such a significant margin.”

There’s more:

“Some of Hamilton’s writing feels remarkably prescient. In the series, we discuss his warning that a despot-like figure might one day arise in America who could ‘throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

Both Variety and Knappenberger are clearly no fans of the Electoral College, suggesting the larger purpose behind the project.

Plus, the trailer teases an America at an inflection point, part of the Left’s “we’re about to lose our Democracy” caterwalling. That typically happens when they’re out of power or losing their grip on the narrative du jour.

“This is a pivotal moment to choose who do we want to be .. are we for some of us or are we for all of us?” says the trailer.

Oh, and far-Left actor Tom Hanks is an executive producer.

“The American Experiment” debuts June 24 on Netflix.

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