On the morning of September 2, 1715, Philippe d’Orleans prepared for an impossible task.
King Louis XIV had just died the day before after a painful struggle with gangrene, leaving his five-year old great grandson to inherit the throne.
Philippe had been appointed regent the week prior, meaning that he would rule France until the boy king came of age and could take the throne.
But Philippe knew the situation in France was grim.
Louis XIV’s lavish spending and penchant for endless warfare had left the kingdom completely bankrupt; the French national debt was so large that its interest payments alone exceeded the government’s annual tax revenue.
Taxes were already high, stifling economic development. Inflation was rising. Food was in short supply. Corruption was rampant. Social divisions were raging.
And most of all people, were angry. The King that had ruled over them for seven decades had ruined their lives, and there was hardly a single household in France that hadn’t lost a loved one to one of Louis XIV’s wars.
They hated him for it. Most French peasants celebrated his death, and some spat at his coffin as the funeral procession passed.
Philippe wasted no time, and he began making widespread reforms immediately.
He started with dramatic cuts in government spending, including pruning the new King’s personal budget to almost nothing. He vastly reduced the size of the French army, and he scaled back public welfare.
He also eliminated many taxes, cut the ones that remained, and greatly simplified the process of paying them.
Philippe fired thousands of government bureaucrats who were getting rich by clogging up the system, and he took steps to stamp out corruption.
He sought peace with France’s former adversaries, traded with everyone, and established new relations with rising powers (like the Russian Empire).
He reversed Louis XIV’s policies of censorship, and he advocated for national unity and tolerance.
It wasn’t just empty words; Philippe released prisoners from the Bastille who had been arrested of political crimes. And he even set a personal example by graciously smiling when he was occasionally lampooned in the press– something that would have been unthinkable only a few years before.
Philippe’s reforms were far from perfect, and there were a number of terrible ideas (like the ill-fated Mississippi Company bubble of 1720).
But overall the reforms worked. And he didn’t even need do anything complicated. Rather, his primary strategy was to remove as much government as possible, avoid conflict, and let freedom prevail.
Sadly, though, the prosperity didn’t last. Philippe died in 1723, just a few months after the boy king was crowned Louis XV.
At first the new ministers kept up Philippe’s policies. But in time, France returned to the old ways of corruption, intolerance, persecution, and war… all of which ultimately resulted in a bloody revolution in 1789.
Philippe’s story does show, however, that it’s possible to fix even the worst economic and public finance disasters, as long as the government gets out of the way and stops making the problem worse.
It would be nice to see that approach today in the West, and especially the US. But leadership can’t seem to stop making things worse.
First off, they’re addicted to deficits; even though the US national debt rocketed past $30 TRILLION this year, the government still hasn’t found the motivation to balance the budget and live within its means.
The White House’s most recent budget proposal for next year shows a deficit of “only” $1.8 trillion. And they’re actually bragging about this like it’s a major accomplishment.
And it was only a few months ago that the most senior officials in the federal government, including the Speaker of the House and the President himself, insisted that their multi-trillion dollar ‘Build Back Better’ bill would “cost nothing”.
They even went on TV multiple times to make this ridiculous assertion, almost as if they wanted to leave no doubt of their economic illiteracy.
They clearly have zero understanding of the problems; they blame inflation, for example on “corporate greed”, and have decided to ‘fix’ inflation by having powerful government agencies harass the private sector.
They actually believe they’re fixing high oil prices by depleting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as if dipping into your emergency savings is a credible alternative to new production.
And they see every problem as an opportunity to create more regulations.
So, contrary to Philippe d’Orleans, they clearly have no intention of getting out of the way. Quite the opposite– they’re taking a bad situation and making it much worse. And it’s time to get rational about this.
For starters, inflation will likely continue to rise.
After all, we cannot expect them to fix a problem that (a) they do not understand, and (b) they keep making worse.
And most likely it’s only a matter of time before inflation, along with global supply chain madness, pushes much of the world into recession.
They’re not going to be able to fix that either. They don’t have the tools.
They’re already $30 trillion in debt with a $1.8 trillion deficit in their supposedly ‘scaled-back’ budget. Fighting a recession would mean the government dumps trillions more into the economy– money they clearly don’t have.
The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, has few options. Interest rates are already near zero, so they don’t have much room to fight a recession by cutting rates. Besides, any interest rate cut would only risk making inflation worse.
It’s not a great situation. But it is fixable; Philippe d’Orleans showed what could happen if you get out of the way and let freedom prevail. It’s not rocket science:
Stop creating disincentives to work, produce, and trade. Stop creating fanatical regulations. Stop dismantling capitalism in the name of social justice. Stop fomenting conflict. Stop trying to invent new taxes.
Just stop. And let people live their lives.
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“Just stop. And let people live their lives.”
That should do it. Real helpful. All these words with no action gets pretty tiresome.
I’ll await your lead.
Of course you would, man of the times. SMH 🙄
Touché, mademoiselle, touché.
haha
AA,
OK, YOU have established I’m a “man of the times”.
That you are evidently such a strong woman of the times, please expound on our collective course of action as you see it.
Waiting patiently, for more than your snide deflection.
Steve…I don’t exactly like telling men how to be men, if you know what I mean. There are plenty of men (as in NOT betas) on this site that you can learn from.
That said, I do have plenty of ideas that I don’t have a ton of time to list out right now. Problem is that most are not ready for it. Or…they’re waiting on their women to take the lead…as you pointed out.
AA,
You have the answers but don’t have the time? Don’t be selfish.
In the time you’ve spent on your ad hominem attack you could have shown this Beta the light, the path forward.
Do share, I’m “ready” to learn no matter the depth of personal pain involved.
Still, patiently awaiting but growing tired of serial deflections.
wtf are you doing
Terribly difficult to convince people who are “victims”of society’s ills that they’re the actual problem…..
Wars, waste, Wall Street, and welfare. When the final post-mortem US history is written the verdict will be it all came undone from these four excesses, enabled by a privately owned central bank issuing fiat money backed by bombs and missiles.
Fiat and wall street are to blame. Faux success.
1) Fed debt is say $30 trillion. Inflation of say 10% reduces that by $3 trillion in real terms each year. If they add back $1.8T in deficit spending they have reduced their debt in real term as by $1.2T.
2) that debt reduction actually comes out of someone’s pocket. The bottom half of the population doesn’t have any wealth, so it doesn’t come out of theirs, but they will suffer as bread becomes more expensive. Although a lot of them can give up their Igizmos, Air Jordan’s, etc. if it gets bad enough.
3) the mega rich will not be hurt by inflation – if anything they will make out like bandits, as there will be enormous buying opportunity.
4) the next tier down from the mega rich – say the top 10% to 20% – will be ok. Doctors, lawyers, biz folks will largely be ok, as they hike prices and fees to offset the inflation, and as they are generally liquid, they will also be able to take advantage of buying opportunities.
5) then there is the working class/middle class. Guess who gets to fund that $1.2 trillion in reduced real debt? Why, that would be them. They have assets, but not liquid assets. Oops, too bad for them! They will also be hit by daily rising prices. As they tend to be workers and tend to be trying to do things like pay mortgages, etc. they will have a hard time finding discretionary spending to cut back. They are going to get crucified by this inflationary cycle. All the real pain will fall to them. They are going to cough up around $10,000 a year per person (say $40,000 per year for a family of 4 – 1.2 trillion divided by say 120 million in that band) in real dollar losses for EACH year this inflation is running at this rate. They may make up some of the loss via capital gains on housing (which of course gets taxed!) but they are going to get screwed.
This was always going to happen. Always.
How long before the productive people of the US, and elsewhere, go apeshit and have their own major chimp outs a la the mouth breathing ghetto dwellers.
Happy times indeed.
PS – the numbers are illustrative, of course. But think of it this way – GDP is say $20 trillion. 10% of 20 trillion is 2 trillion. Who can recover that 2 trillion each year, and who cannot? It won’t be the working class with their 3% pay increases, much of which is lost to taxes anyway.
You forgot interest on the debt. As that rises to ten and twenty percent what will gov’t do then? Medicare costs are destined to grow like bananas what will all the vax damage. And the immigrants gotta get their share of the spoils. If you don’t have gold, silver, access to food and water, weapons, and some place away from cities, it won’t matter how “rich” in dollars you are.
That interest will be on the new debt issued and rollover debt. A very good point you make, and hence why inflation will not work in the long run. They are just going to try to kick the can down the road, until they kick it over the cliff.
TBills – about three trillion – are the short term debt. As that rolls over, interest rates on it will climb. That will add say $300 billion a year per year in added interest costs. Notes are around $12 trillion, at say an average term outstanding of 5 years. So an extra $2 trillion a year will need to be rolled over. Say another trillion or two from the other types will need to be rolled over each year. So a total of around $7 trillion a year will need to be rolled over each year, at new rates.
Within around 3 years it will have hit the fan. The added additional interests owed will exceed the amount they inflate away each year. Hence why it will be hard to hold inflation at 10% as they head down that path. Notes and TBills will become very high interest debt soon. They need to roll over many trillion a year, and who is going to want that trash debt paying 1% or whatever when inflation is 10%?
The path is going to be very rocky.
2008 would have been the time to get our shit together. Would there have been a ton of hardship…yes but I think when your banks start failing that is a clear signal that what you are doing isn’t working. Everything since that time has been an accounting coverup. Masking problems with more debt. There is no way out of this quagmire now. Pain will come for everyone whether you are ready or not.
When people are hungry things change.
The government understands fully what it is doing. It is part of the great genocide, the culling of the population, the collapse of the currency, and installing the new 5G surveillance state. Who is pulling the strings? It is the Ashkenazi Jews who intend on killing as many gentiles as possible. This is part of their religion in the Talmud. Learn your ancient and recent history and you will come to understand this.
“be your own messiah.” “the nation that will not serve you shall be destroyed.”
“But leadership can’t seem to stop making things worse.”
this completely fails to comprehend the situation. it’s not that the leaders are incompetently making things worse. it’s that the subversives who have captured our nation’s government and who are posing as our “leaders” are deliberately running our nation into the ground. because they hate us, our nation, and anything that is not them.
Fix it yourself. RETARD!!No one else will.