Dear Editor,

It is interesting how David Kruse talks about inflation (Going down the rabbit hole on inflation, Dec.24). He seems to think it is like the weather, something that just happens.

Inflation is a product of a private bank (The Federal Reserve) acting at the behest of the only real monopoly in the United States, the U.S. government. Defining inflation as rising prices is deceiving. Inflation is the declining value of currency. The currency representing your money is being destroyed by government spending of “borrowed” dollars printed out of nothing (Inflated money supply). Farmers: Imagine if USDA reported the existence of an extra billion bushels of corn all of a sudden. What would the corn price do?

It is a symptom of a conspiracy (keep reading even if this word causes a tantrum) by government officials to create an illusion of prosperity even though consumers are experiencing a decline in purchasing power. Their wages decidedly don’t buy as much as they used to.

Reports of record highs in stock markets, while appearing to indicate a roaring economy, actually indicate that it takes more dollars to by stocks, not increased value.

Retirees in particular, are hurt by this prosperity charade. Their big plans to retire at some point have proven to be a mistake because prices have gone up relative to their savings. Oops! It’s because their saved dollars shrunk in order to prop-up politicians’ grand plans that didn’t work, because planned economies don’t work.

Only free economies are sustainable because billions of decisions by self interested people will always trump politicians’ plans influenced by lobbyists. Pleasing donors is paid for by working folk in the long run.

Democrats and Republicans, right wingers and left, all deny that inflation is caused by this infusion of cash because it is the stealth tax that funds their popularity. Productive and ambitious people, the ones who make this a land of plenty, are starting to dial back business start-ups and expansions because the additional income will be taken by politicians to appease donors, whether in “defense” spending, or domestic boondoggles.

Politicians now blame “big grocery” or “big oil” for increased costs for working people. But it is the only monopoly, government, that is to blame.

Fritz Groszkruger