President Trump has my full support. Each time the left attacks him, whether it is over the roundup and deportation of alien criminals and terrorists, or the incineration of drug boats bringing death to our shores, or his rebuilding of American industry and competitiveness through tariffs, like so many others I say, “Yes, that is what I voted for!” But there is one way in which the orange man has really disappointed everyone, and I’ll bet that includes you. Why can’t he just bring prices down and make things affordable again!

There is no good reason he can’t do that, except that the task is impossible. There are two insurmountable obstacles to ever bringing prices back down to where we might like them, and both are baked into the system. The first is the method by which, for the past 100 years give or take a decade, prices have deliberately been made to go up. The second is the disaster that will most likely befall us if prices were ever to go back down.

In my last article I described how inflation is created by government, and only by government. If this concept is new to you, I recommend you read that article first. But in short, governments, usually through their central banks, inject new money into the economy, increasing the quantity of currency in circulation relative to the amount of goods available for purchase. Think of it this way. Governments print dollars just as a counterfeiter would do—only they do it under the color of law, that is, they counterfeit “legally.” This results in more dollars chasing fewer goods, which causes prices to go up.

But this is no accident. Economists generally believe that an inflation rate of 2% to 3% is ideal, and that is exactly the rate at which prices are increasing right now Under Trump. The theory that economists subscribe to, and more importantly the theory that all the central banks enforce, is that inflation at that rate will “balance price stability with economic dynamism.” (I rarely resort to Google, but this phrase perfectly captures the notion.)

So how does that work? Well, in theory inflation at such a rate is thought to stimulate the economy by creating an incentive for people and businesses to spend their money right away, before it loses value. And it does lose value during inflation. (See Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good money.” For example, when currencies around the world are losing value due to local inflation rates even worse than our own, their people hoard American dollars and their governments hoard U.S. treasury notes. They spend their junk paper money first.)

Beyond that, inflation allows businesses to cut wages during tough times while pretending to increase them. (When inflation is at 9%, as it was during Biden’s third year, a nominal 5% pay raise is in reality a 4% pay cut.) But perhaps more significantly, inflation allows the central bankers (read Federal Reserve) room to play with interest rates to “stimulate the economy,” and power like that is a bureaucrat’s wet dream.

To the average American exhaustingly bored by economics, that might not sound all that bad. But consider! At the end of four years, with an inflation rate of 3% per year, prices will have increased over-all more than 12%. This means that if you had $100,000 saved for retirement, after four years your bank account will contain the spending power of only $92,000. During the Biden years, according to official figures, total inflation was 22%. (It was actually higher, of course, but let’s pretend.) That means that what you could buy for a dollar on Biden’s first day of office cost you $1.22 on the day Trump was inaugurated. Or to look at it another way, your $100,000 in the bank at the beginning of Biden’s four years was worth only $78,000 on the day he went to pasture.

So, with prices already increased by 22%, and with the Federal Reserve determined to add 2% to 3% more inflation each year, how does anyone imagine Trump can bring things back to “affordable?” The demand the left is making is that he reduce inflation to a level below the very level they recommend for a “healthy” economy and have always recommended. The inflation rate in the U.S over the past hundred years has averaged nearly 4% per year. At a superficial glance, that would seem to mean that prices have gone up 400% since 1925. That is, things might seem now to cost a mere four times as much as they did back then.

But that interpretation overlooks the fact that each year’s new inflation is compounded with all of the past inflation. For example, if under Trump this year inflation remains at 3%, that will mean an actual price increase of 3% times $1.22 since Biden was elected (3% of the nominal value of our dollar plus the four years of 22% inflation under Biden). Another year at Trump’s relatively low inflation rate will mean an increase of 3% times $1.26, and then the following year an increase of 3% of $1.30, and so on ad infinitum.

With that in view, how do we even calculate the total inflation rate since 1925. My math is not up to that task, so I Googled it! “An item costing $100 in 1920 would cost approximately $1619.88 today….” In layman’s terms, that is sixteen times as much. Ever since the creation of the Federal Reserve, prices have steadily gone up, except during the Great depression. That dollar grampa clutched in his grimy paws back in 1920 would be worth only 8 cents today, and you might as well throw away the pennies because we won’t be using them anymore. A pound of pennies today has nearly six dollars-worth of copper in it. So, you want the affordability of 1920? Good luck with that!

Another great depression is exactly what the left is hoping for when they cry out for “affordability.” Because like the “fair share” of taxes they demand our producers cough up each time an election approaches, “affordability” is a goal that can never be reached. It will always be a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose slight-of-hand, a stick to beat us with until everything is “free,” as in socialist Venezuela, where the current inflation rate is reported as nearly 300%, down from the 1,000% of recent years. (That means that in Venezuela right now, prices are nearly triple what they were twelve months ago, even though things there are as free as politicians like our New York mayor Zohran Mamdani can ever make them.)

According to economists, the real danger is not inflation but deflation, a decrease in the amount of money in circulation. Any such decrease (return to “affordability”) means that the value of a money will go up (and the apparent price of goods down). With a deflation rate of 10%, at the end of a year you will only need 90 cents to buy a dollars-worth of goods. And that sounds wonderful. But economists hate the idea, because people tend to hold on to money when it is increasing in value, and that means an economic slow down and potential stagnation.

Think of it as collecting compound interest at the rate of 10% per year. At the end of seven years of such deflation, due to compounding you will have doubled your money. But returning to Google, “falling prices (deflation) make people delay spending, which reduces demand, forcing businesses to cut wages/jobs, further lowering spending and deepening economic slumps, also making debts harder to pay as money becomes more valuable.” That is what they call “stagflation,” the bugaboo that supposedly forecasts depression. And another Great Depression is the last thing any of us want.

So, Trump is trapped between the horns of a dilemma. There are only two ways to reduce prices. Either he must somehow “deflate” the dollar, increasing its buying power at the risk of causing another Great Depression, or he must increase the quantity of goods in circulation by augmenting the productivity of our industries. The first method is out of the question. Notwithstanding the Democrats dare, Trump cannot cut inflation much below 2% to 3% because the Fed will simply not allow it, and that means that no matter what he does prices will continue to go up.

Due to past policies beyond anyone’s present control, Trump must choose between the Scylla and the Charybdis, between never ending unaffordability on the one hand and a catastrophic depression on the other. That is a hopeless prospect, because unless he can stimulate our industries to produce more by lowering taxes and cutting back on regulations, and by imposing tariffs on those countries that have been blocking the entry of American made goods, he has no power to bring back affordability. So, he somehow needs to increase productivity, in order that there will be more goods available to match the annual rising tide of crisp new dollars flowing out of the Fed.

And as you would expect, that is exactly what Trump is doing. By lowering taxes, fast-tracking permitting, eliminating burdensome regulations, and penalizing the importation of goods from countries that do not allow our products to enter their borders, Trump is “Making America Great Again” just as he did in his first term. Only be patient! America was not built in a day.

But you might ask, how do the Democrats feel about Trumps solution to affordability? Will they cooperate? I have it on good authority that they would rather be boiled in excrement than allow it! So don’t expect a return to “affordability” ever! Democrats want to double down on regulations—always for good reasons of course. (You know, “the environment!”) They want to increase taxes on the capital that has already been taxed at the highest rates, because stifling American industry does not bother them at all. They want to impeach Trump for blowing up the high-speed cigarette boats that are bringing in the drugs that kill us by the hundreds of thousands. And they want to castrate him over the tariffs that will ultimately allow American manufacturers to sell their products in other countries, bringing us wealth.

So, the best Trump can possibly do is hold inflation at about 2% to 3% as he did in his first term, while at the same time increasing the available volume of goods through enhanced productivity, making them at least somewhat cheaper. (Drill baby drill!) But, affordability? That would mean a drastic cut in government spending and waste, the starving out of all the bloated pet projects from which Democrats and Rinos get their campaign contributions and their kick-backs. And as 150,000 taxpayer supported Somalians in Minnesota will be happy to tell you, that gravy train has left the station.