About the Inflation Reduction Act 

What a wonderfully Orwellian world we live in. Congress has just passed a bill called the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that, as far as I can tell, is practically designed to increase inflation.

Its supporters claim that, in addition to reducing inflation, it will increase GDP by increasing taxes and adding regulations and doubling the size of the IRS. Again, these are policies that are almost certain to lower GDP.

The bill won’t raise taxes – we were assured – on anyone making less than $400,000 a year. But that claim has already been refuted by the government’s own budgetary office.

I’ll talk more about this in future issues as we see how the provisions of this bill take hold in the economy. But for the moment, I want to highlight what I thought was the oddest aspect of the advertising campaign for the bill’s passage: its specificity.

As reported by Yahoo!News:

“The IRA provisions could also generate enormous public health and jobs benefits” [according to a study from the think tank Energy Innovations]. In addition to preventing between 3,700 and 3,900 premature deaths from air pollution in 2030, Energy Innovation found it would lead to a net increase of up to 1.5 million jobs in 2030 and increase the United States’ gross domestic product by 0.84% to 0.88% in 2030.

I believe Bill Bonner had it right when he said this in the August 4 edition of Bonner Private Research:

“This grab bag of boondoggles will increase US GDP by 0.84% eight years from now? It will save 3,700 to 3,900 lives? Really? The technocratic precision is breathtakingly absurd. There is no way on Earth to predict the effect of this collection of robbery, flimflam and jackassery on our $24 trillion economy… eight years in the future. And to two decimal points!”