The crowd at the Fire Ring this morning was on hold until the new numbers were floated out of The Swamp to our north. There was speculation before the release. Agnes stopped by early to drop off some yarn for Melissa to attempt to crochet into something useful. She had stopped at the Safeway and waved a receipt around with some minor agitation, claiming that a bag of those white-bread hot-dog buns was $4.29 a pack for something that served only as a wrapper for the actual food part of a snack. “Man bites dog,” she said. “But the bun part used to cost less than a buck for an eight-count pack.”

“The news claims they just released the number for last month. Inflation is down two-tenths of a percent. Now it is only 8.3%.”

“But gas is the highest on record! That was the news yesterday to go along with the President’s address on inflation. So they want to show some progress and here it is.”

“The other word, if you listened to the next paragraph, is the core number is cire inflation is still going on, since the official number excludes fuel and food.” We all turned to look at Buck, an actual economist whose thinking is not hampered by his current emeritus status. 6.5% at the core is an important number that actually means more than the one in the billboard.”
“But doesn’t it mean things are getting slightly better?”

“Sure. But it reflects which numbers and who is counting them.”

“Exactly,” Buck said with authority. “For example, the announcement that gas prices hit records yesterday won’t be counted until next month. You have to take some of the odd stuff into it. They say the pandemic caused inflation. To a degree that is true, but you could more accurately state it in saying a policy response to COVID, which was printing a whole bunch of money in an economy that was already recovering made the money supply behave abnormally.”

Splash had a big smile. “Yeah, I kept living on social security and the part of the Navy pension that was left over after taking care of someone else. I didn’t need the extra cash, so I did some stuff and tucked a little away so that the rising prices caused by all that cash sitting around in houses and savings could provide a cushion.”

Buck shook his head vigorously. “Yeah, that is part of it. But the other policy part was to shut down drilling and transport of fossil fuels.”

“But the world is supposed to end if we don’t go back to organic farming and transition to electric cars.”

Buck smiled. “If this was real, it would mean all societies would join together to reduce emissions. As it is, it appears to be a decision of the Western nations to cut themselves off from a system that worked and allow countries like China to continue to build coal plants and burn fossil fuels to build the products we purchase but refuse to produce.”

Amanda snapped her tablet closed. “Just stop. We are not permitted to criticize things that have good intentions at their heart, even if their imposition has dramatic consequences. Take diesel fuel, for example. It is used in every step of something we agree is a necessary thing. It is part of fertilizer development, powers the agricultural machines that plant and harvest vast swaths of crop land, transport those food products to processing facilities powered by mainly fossil fueled grids, and then with finished products provided nation- and world wide- by trucks and ships.”

“So you are saying that food production requires fossil fuel extraction and processing.”

Buck smiled. “It is a system of systems. It is a virtuous thought that we ought to go back to living with sun and wind power. But there simply is no means to rely on them for on-demand power needs when the sun is down or the wind stops blowing.”

“Unless we can get the number of people who have to be fed reduced. Then we can live in tranquil harmony.”

DeMille looked at Amanda, and she looked back at him with a frown. He understood this was not going to be permitted to get to digital production since it might be interpreted as critical of virtuous if unworkable projects.

“OK,” he said, rising to signify another production meeting was about concluded. “We actually have made significant progress in reducing excess population numbers. Europe is well below replacement on people. America is only staying even with mass immigration of people with few viable technical skills. China is just beginning to deal with a significant demographic change imposed by the one-child policy. That policy is transforming once successful nations into dependency. And adding to that good news is the inflation number this morning. I think we can agree that we ought to feel at least two-tenths of one percent better today.”

No knowing any other way to approach things, we all agreed and began to consider how lunch was going to be grown, transported, delivered and prepared. Agnes left us a pack of hot-dog buns, just in case we had a hard time figuring it out.

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