South Dakota Voices Response: Kevin, thank you for the note. Those are good questions. It was a lot easier for people who were born in the 1960s than for people who were born in 1990 or 2000, because the the people who were born in the 1960s had a chance to build income and make a large purchase before inflation spiraled out of control. Even without cigarettes and tattoos it is likely many people in the younger generations will not be able to afford a house. Of course having a house is not mandatory, but many people believe the government spending needs to be brought in line with income so the standard of living does not continue to drop.
Email comment from KP: "My question to you is are any of these living outside their means? I am 62 now. Raised 4 kids. I never once filed bankruptcy in all my life. Is it tough? Yes. I see a lot of younger families buying houses that are more than they need. Also see a lot of these spending money on alcohol, cigarettes, and tattoos. Are these necessary?"
South Dakota Voices Response: Peg, thanks for joining us. Printing money is definitely an issue.
Email Comment from PT: "If the government prints more money, inflation will hit us by the end of the summer. The so-called clean CR (Continuing Resolution) was Pelosi's CR. It had none of Musk's savings in it!!!! I pray that when it hits the Senate, they have enough sense to codify it line-by-line, coordinate it with Musk so that the savings, albeit them short, that Musk has discovered. Unfortunately, many of the senators are facing election issues and won't do what I suggest. It would be a blessing if the CR was set back to pre-Covid days, at least we Americans would have a chance."
Maybe DOGE will get to the Fed for that overdue audit; then we would discover many things: The real cause of inflation is fiat "money" creation, monetized, inflation debt. Yes, the massive spending increases the original problem.
Years ago ( late 80s) we had a resolution passed in SD Legislature. Principal legislators were Walter Dale Miller (R) and Jim Burg ( D) that brought in Sen. Jack Metcalf ( WA) with his group Honest Money For America and spoke with individual legislators about the need to understand the Constitutionality of the Fed and make major changes, accordingly.
Suffice to say we need a major Study Taskforce here to understand this issue. Have Catherine Austin Fitts and others come in and testify. Long overdue.
"All the perplexities, confusions and distresses in America arise not from defects in the Constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, as much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation!
Thank you for sharing that historical information. Most people agree South Dakota needs to get its finances in order and do whatever it can to counter the out of control spending at state and the federal level. Part of the effort needs to be legislation that cuts off the out of control corporate welfare (tax incentive financing, economic development, foreign and refugee worker wage depression, and the list goes on an on) that gives corporations freebees at the expense of the taxpayers.
Inflation is the tax we pay for when the federal government spends more than it collects in fees, customs and taxes. Politicians learned long ago that they could buy votes now and shift the consequences forward in time through deficit spending. But there's always a price, and we paid it every year with the decline in the dollar's purchasing power even as we're paying it now. A few saw it happening years ago and warned us, but both major parties fumbled past opportunities to do something less drastic that could stop, or perhaps reverse the creep. Now it's a threat to continued liberty with social stability. Historically, this has happened many times, and nations typically answered by engaging in war or suffering revolution. We have Doge, so perhaps we can dodge some of the extreme consequences if it actually cuts Uncle Sam's obesely big fat debt, yet to be addressed. Don't accept the false financial promises of political weight loss drugs.
(I continue not to understand how with a decline below replacement level in births, the US needs an increase in the supply of housing.)
I don't think you can strip out the debt related to automobiles. Their cost and their maintenance - inflated by a mountain of regulations - are a central part of household debt. A modest car price today would have bought and upgraded my parents house, or would paid for half of my first house.
Hey c’mon man the IRA bill, the inflation reduction act has fixed the US economy, thank goodness for VP Harris who cast the deciding vote! Go Green Team!
Janet Yellen reported that inflation is transitory, didn’t you listen to her?
You guys are so behind the times, we need to have the Federal Reserve print more money so we can get out of this mess. ;)
Very interesting article! Thanks for spelling it out - I keep hearing about inflation but seeing a comparison ($50K vs $233K) makes more sense.
I do want to address the comment "Some parents have become so desperate that they are home schooling their children (which means one parent is not able to reach full earning potential)."
I see two assumptions in that sentence:
1) that the highest goal in life is to reach your "full earning potential"
2) that people only choose home education because they are desperate (in other words, it is a lesser choice than using the public school system)
Sometimes the better choice involves more work and bucking the current culture...and only when doing what everyone else does becomes painful do we realize that we have traded what is excellent for what is easy. (sorta like eating fast food for every meal)
Stop blaming public education for children’s failures. Where are the parents? Classes used to be around 20 kids per teacher. My daughter had 38 kids in her class last year with no aide. When kids are discipline problems the parents blame the teacher rather than looking in the mirror.
Kids go to school hungry or don’t even show up sometimes- where are the parents? Too many parents don’t read to their kids or model reading themselves. They expect teachers to raise their kids for them.
Now they want to ban certain books or jail librarians if their child gets hold of a book they don’t like. Where are the parents? Are they just dumping their kids off at the library for free babysitting? PARENTS need to step up!
I can only imagine how challenging it must be for your daughter. It sounds like you are in agreement with the people that say we need to stop the corporate welfare, no more foreign workers and refugees that overload the school system with kids that are way below grade level. And no more wage depression by shifting the burden of their medical care, food, housing, and transportation to the taxpayers. Then the parents wouldn't have to be working all the time to try to get by and would have more time to deal with their children. Sadly, my child needs to be making another $200,000 per year to make the same real salary I did when I graduated (and she has a good salary for a recent graduate). It is challenging and overwhelming for younger people. It seems that we need to do something and do something quickly.
Are they really lazy if there is so much wage depression that they are struggling to get by? Needing a $200K/year salary bump to be where people used to be is A LOT. Correcting that problem might be the first step. I am not sure I understand your comment banned books. I have not seen anything about book bans. Maybe that is just hype (and an attempt to build partisanship). As a parent, I would want the graphic sexual material in a different section of the library so my child was not reading it unsupervised. There is material in Canterbury Tales that should not be available to young children (and it wasn't). Way too graphic. It was in a different section of the library. I was curious about the book issues and watched the Sioux Falls City Council meeting when it was discussed (see around minute 48 https://city-of-siouxfalls.cablecast.tv/show/3763?site=1). The content was so inappropriate (and pornographic) they had to put a disclaimer on the video when those books were read during the meeting. I would never allow my 6 or 7 year old to read them and would be mad if there were readily available in a classroom or a library where my child could read them when I wasn't present.
I'm not getting your $200k income point, I know plenty of folks who have household incomes of $200k and their kids are out of control, data shows once your basic needs are covered money stress issue are not at the core of family tensions.
Any way...
Never be a victim, fight for sanity and reality like your life depends upon it. Certainly our children are looking up to us to do just this thing.
Who runs the schools, the admin, so why don't they have the wherewithal to create policy that suspend the trouble child? My guess is once dad or mom have the take the day(s) off work to attend to the trouble maker, I suspect things will change.
Class size, parents need to push the school board to REQUIRE 2 teachers in the room if class size exceeds x-size. Many of these issues can be managed, not requiring more dollars, but innovative approaches.
Time to raise hell about what is going on, why put up with it? Folks, seriously if you have children in a chaotic school, gather up the parents and use your voice.
BTW: i agree with you 100% - If want want to hear about those awful book bans you'll have to watch Rachel Maddow her clan, apparently they wish to expose innocent children to perversion.
I think what people are trying to say is we are out of touch. We are stuck in a paradigm that doesn't exist. Just getting by is so hard now that parents don't have time to do anything, even deal with the children's schooling. Everyone is working just to pay the bills. That is the reason for the article. A salary of 50K in 1997 is the same as a salary of 233K now. People aren't making those salaries. And we are actively supporting inflation and wage depression. And politicians are just shuffling money around (no cuts). It is showing up in our schools, in our medical system, etc. Something has to change.
Books - again I encourage everyone to step out of their paradigm and away from the news media that is being used to control them. Listen to the City Council recording, talk with parents, etc. Rachel Maddow has nothing to do with what is happening in Sioux Falls. And whether is CNN, Fox, or CNBC the goal is to get people agitated so they have "eyes" and can keep their ad dollars up.
South Dakota Voices Response: Kevin, thank you for the note. Those are good questions. It was a lot easier for people who were born in the 1960s than for people who were born in 1990 or 2000, because the the people who were born in the 1960s had a chance to build income and make a large purchase before inflation spiraled out of control. Even without cigarettes and tattoos it is likely many people in the younger generations will not be able to afford a house. Of course having a house is not mandatory, but many people believe the government spending needs to be brought in line with income so the standard of living does not continue to drop.
Email comment from KP: "My question to you is are any of these living outside their means? I am 62 now. Raised 4 kids. I never once filed bankruptcy in all my life. Is it tough? Yes. I see a lot of younger families buying houses that are more than they need. Also see a lot of these spending money on alcohol, cigarettes, and tattoos. Are these necessary?"
South Dakota Voices Response: Peg, thanks for joining us. Printing money is definitely an issue.
Email Comment from PT: "If the government prints more money, inflation will hit us by the end of the summer. The so-called clean CR (Continuing Resolution) was Pelosi's CR. It had none of Musk's savings in it!!!! I pray that when it hits the Senate, they have enough sense to codify it line-by-line, coordinate it with Musk so that the savings, albeit them short, that Musk has discovered. Unfortunately, many of the senators are facing election issues and won't do what I suggest. It would be a blessing if the CR was set back to pre-Covid days, at least we Americans would have a chance."
South Dakota Voices Response: James, thank you for joining the discussion.
Email comment from JW: "Good hits. Wasteful spending needs to stop"
Maybe DOGE will get to the Fed for that overdue audit; then we would discover many things: The real cause of inflation is fiat "money" creation, monetized, inflation debt. Yes, the massive spending increases the original problem.
Years ago ( late 80s) we had a resolution passed in SD Legislature. Principal legislators were Walter Dale Miller (R) and Jim Burg ( D) that brought in Sen. Jack Metcalf ( WA) with his group Honest Money For America and spoke with individual legislators about the need to understand the Constitutionality of the Fed and make major changes, accordingly.
Suffice to say we need a major Study Taskforce here to understand this issue. Have Catherine Austin Fitts and others come in and testify. Long overdue.
"All the perplexities, confusions and distresses in America arise not from defects in the Constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, as much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation!
John Adams
Thank you for sharing that historical information. Most people agree South Dakota needs to get its finances in order and do whatever it can to counter the out of control spending at state and the federal level. Part of the effort needs to be legislation that cuts off the out of control corporate welfare (tax incentive financing, economic development, foreign and refugee worker wage depression, and the list goes on an on) that gives corporations freebees at the expense of the taxpayers.
Yes, that whole public-private corporate welfare "economic development," at taxpayer expense" needs to be axed!
Inflation is the tax we pay for when the federal government spends more than it collects in fees, customs and taxes. Politicians learned long ago that they could buy votes now and shift the consequences forward in time through deficit spending. But there's always a price, and we paid it every year with the decline in the dollar's purchasing power even as we're paying it now. A few saw it happening years ago and warned us, but both major parties fumbled past opportunities to do something less drastic that could stop, or perhaps reverse the creep. Now it's a threat to continued liberty with social stability. Historically, this has happened many times, and nations typically answered by engaging in war or suffering revolution. We have Doge, so perhaps we can dodge some of the extreme consequences if it actually cuts Uncle Sam's obesely big fat debt, yet to be addressed. Don't accept the false financial promises of political weight loss drugs.
Excellent.
Thank you. What are some legitimate ideas & actions for our State to make this happen?
I wasn't able to get the link you cited for household debt to open. Here's the New York Federal Reserve site.
https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc
Your numbers are correct, but it is important to note that the part of household debt that has increased most is mortgage debt for home loans.
This is a direct result of the inflation in home prices, not a reflection of poor management by families.
If you strip out debt related to automobiles, the root causes of the problem become even more apparent.
This all goes to your point, though.
Inflation is a result of too much money chasing too few goods.
The solution isn't to reduce the money in people's pockets, it is to increase the supply of goods available for purchase.
This sounds simple, but it isn't. There is also no quick fix.
Since the biggest part of the problem is housing, we could work to increase the supply of housing.
But that increases the demand and price for lumber, concrete, etc.
On and on.
I don't want to bore you with a course in Economics, but that's where the solution is.
Thank you for catching the broken link. I updated with your link. It is better than mine (graphs are better than tables).
(I continue not to understand how with a decline below replacement level in births, the US needs an increase in the supply of housing.)
I don't think you can strip out the debt related to automobiles. Their cost and their maintenance - inflated by a mountain of regulations - are a central part of household debt. A modest car price today would have bought and upgraded my parents house, or would paid for half of my first house.
All good points.
There are so many moving parts in this inflation equation that I can't understand it.
The sticker price on my 2019 vehicle was almost twice the price of my first house.
This is only one of the things that seem to be unsustainable in our world.
Hey c’mon man the IRA bill, the inflation reduction act has fixed the US economy, thank goodness for VP Harris who cast the deciding vote! Go Green Team!
Janet Yellen reported that inflation is transitory, didn’t you listen to her?
You guys are so behind the times, we need to have the Federal Reserve print more money so we can get out of this mess. ;)
Very interesting article! Thanks for spelling it out - I keep hearing about inflation but seeing a comparison ($50K vs $233K) makes more sense.
I do want to address the comment "Some parents have become so desperate that they are home schooling their children (which means one parent is not able to reach full earning potential)."
I see two assumptions in that sentence:
1) that the highest goal in life is to reach your "full earning potential"
2) that people only choose home education because they are desperate (in other words, it is a lesser choice than using the public school system)
Sometimes the better choice involves more work and bucking the current culture...and only when doing what everyone else does becomes painful do we realize that we have traded what is excellent for what is easy. (sorta like eating fast food for every meal)
Stop blaming public education for children’s failures. Where are the parents? Classes used to be around 20 kids per teacher. My daughter had 38 kids in her class last year with no aide. When kids are discipline problems the parents blame the teacher rather than looking in the mirror.
Kids go to school hungry or don’t even show up sometimes- where are the parents? Too many parents don’t read to their kids or model reading themselves. They expect teachers to raise their kids for them.
Now they want to ban certain books or jail librarians if their child gets hold of a book they don’t like. Where are the parents? Are they just dumping their kids off at the library for free babysitting? PARENTS need to step up!
I can only imagine how challenging it must be for your daughter. It sounds like you are in agreement with the people that say we need to stop the corporate welfare, no more foreign workers and refugees that overload the school system with kids that are way below grade level. And no more wage depression by shifting the burden of their medical care, food, housing, and transportation to the taxpayers. Then the parents wouldn't have to be working all the time to try to get by and would have more time to deal with their children. Sadly, my child needs to be making another $200,000 per year to make the same real salary I did when I graduated (and she has a good salary for a recent graduate). It is challenging and overwhelming for younger people. It seems that we need to do something and do something quickly.
Absolutely spot on, the State children's services should visit these lazy parents and if they continue to misbehave the children should be removed.
Those awful right-wing nut jobs need to keep out of it.
Of course we need to have banned books in our school libraries for children to become properly educated, read on; https://www.commonsensemedia.org/lists/frequently-challenged-and-banned-books-for-kids-and-teens
Are they really lazy if there is so much wage depression that they are struggling to get by? Needing a $200K/year salary bump to be where people used to be is A LOT. Correcting that problem might be the first step. I am not sure I understand your comment banned books. I have not seen anything about book bans. Maybe that is just hype (and an attempt to build partisanship). As a parent, I would want the graphic sexual material in a different section of the library so my child was not reading it unsupervised. There is material in Canterbury Tales that should not be available to young children (and it wasn't). Way too graphic. It was in a different section of the library. I was curious about the book issues and watched the Sioux Falls City Council meeting when it was discussed (see around minute 48 https://city-of-siouxfalls.cablecast.tv/show/3763?site=1). The content was so inappropriate (and pornographic) they had to put a disclaimer on the video when those books were read during the meeting. I would never allow my 6 or 7 year old to read them and would be mad if there were readily available in a classroom or a library where my child could read them when I wasn't present.
I'm not getting your $200k income point, I know plenty of folks who have household incomes of $200k and their kids are out of control, data shows once your basic needs are covered money stress issue are not at the core of family tensions.
Any way...
Never be a victim, fight for sanity and reality like your life depends upon it. Certainly our children are looking up to us to do just this thing.
Who runs the schools, the admin, so why don't they have the wherewithal to create policy that suspend the trouble child? My guess is once dad or mom have the take the day(s) off work to attend to the trouble maker, I suspect things will change.
Class size, parents need to push the school board to REQUIRE 2 teachers in the room if class size exceeds x-size. Many of these issues can be managed, not requiring more dollars, but innovative approaches.
Time to raise hell about what is going on, why put up with it? Folks, seriously if you have children in a chaotic school, gather up the parents and use your voice.
BTW: i agree with you 100% - If want want to hear about those awful book bans you'll have to watch Rachel Maddow her clan, apparently they wish to expose innocent children to perversion.
I think what people are trying to say is we are out of touch. We are stuck in a paradigm that doesn't exist. Just getting by is so hard now that parents don't have time to do anything, even deal with the children's schooling. Everyone is working just to pay the bills. That is the reason for the article. A salary of 50K in 1997 is the same as a salary of 233K now. People aren't making those salaries. And we are actively supporting inflation and wage depression. And politicians are just shuffling money around (no cuts). It is showing up in our schools, in our medical system, etc. Something has to change.
Books - again I encourage everyone to step out of their paradigm and away from the news media that is being used to control them. Listen to the City Council recording, talk with parents, etc. Rachel Maddow has nothing to do with what is happening in Sioux Falls. And whether is CNN, Fox, or CNBC the goal is to get people agitated so they have "eyes" and can keep their ad dollars up.