https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-made-the-baby-formula-shortage-biden-administration-abbott-tariffs-nestle-11652480538

Of course the Journal is going to focus on “government regulation” and even “tariffs.” If you are trying to make this quarter’s numbers, and importing baby formula from the third world will move X units thus contributing Y to this quarter’s numbers, that is what you are going to do.

If a “journalist” for the financial press, like WSJ, is writing an article from that perspective, then “government regulation” and “tariffs” are going to be the angle you cover.

Which is fine – good even. Because the technical aspects of logistics should stay in the realm of the technical.

But from a perspective “above” the mere econometric, at the level of “nation” or really even “community” it’s utterly irrational to import baby formula at all. In fact, it is insane to import baby formula.

Liechtenstein subsidizes their agricultural industry despite the fact it is a net negative, on paper, when you run the raw numbers through generally accepted accounting principles.

It would also be far more efficient for you to not have a kitchen, but instead you and the family show up to a cafeteria twice a day and be dispensed ~2k calories.

But no human family lives like that, and food – like sex, health, birth, and many other aspects of human life – should not be subject to decisions based on short term financial interests for absentee owners (i.e., “investors” or “shareholders.”)

Not every nation state that exists on earth in 2022 can be, or would want to be, an autarky. But at the scale of a continent, really even a bioregion, a 90% autarky seems about right. The ten percent is exotica, and maybe hydrocarbons might be an exception, but if a country is importing grain because it has to it’s not really a sovereign state.

Here is how the Republicans are going to fuck us.

The Empire, “the West,” instituted a police state, suspended even basic liberties, locked people in their homes, ramped up technocratic tracking and tracing, forced people to wear masks in public, shut down businesses, and forced a Great Reset on the entire population.

They printed up trillions of dollars and gave the money to themselves. Then, they used the trillions they gave themselves to buy real assets – Bill Gates started buying farmland and Blackrock started buying entire suburban neighborhoods.

They shut down global trade, forcing a massive supply squeeze during a collapse in demand due to the lockdowns.

Now, as the citizens demand money, they are pointing to the rise in prices due to lower supply and increased post-reset demand, and are calling this “inflation” and pressuring the Fed to raise interest rates.

Thus, doubling or tripling the value of the trillions of dollars they printed up and gave to themselves.

Now, oligarchs like Bill Gates own the productive farmland, Blackrock owns the suburban houses, and you can buy food from them and rent from them. But you are priced out of the productive economy.

Then the Republicans come in and say, “there is too much government spending, let’s cut Social Security, or Medicare, or lower tariffs.”

Soon they will be running articles in the Journal about how “lucky” Walmart workers are because they get some kind of child care tax credit, if they just hired a tax consultant to fill out the forms.

Americans are too lazy, too profligate in their spending, and need some austerity imposed on them to stop the inflation.

No austerity for Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Larry Fink, and the billionaire class. Nor any austerity for the Democrats that run Silicon Valley, the Google executives, the Twitter board, Wall Street bankers, Goldman Sachs.

They are still printing trillions of dollars and giving the money to themselves.

But because they gave you extra unemployment insurance last year, that caused “inflation.”

So time to tighten your belts, America, party’s over, the fiscally responsible Republicans are back in charge!