What you’re seeing right now is merely the tip of a very large, very cold, very jagged iceberg—one that has been drifting toward us for far longer than anyone in polite society dares to admit. We’re not talking about a decade of fiscal clownery. Try two or three. For that long, governments have been printing ungodly mountains of money to bankroll the green fantasy and a whole circus of adjacent delusions. No, not every cent went into feeding the enviromonster—just a disproportionately fat chunk of it.
And here’s the thing about printing money in a so-called “developed” economy: nothing obvious happens for a very long time. These large, lumbering systems can coast on bluster, hope, fumes, and whatever other ideological incense is fashionable at the moment, all without exhibiting anything too dramatic. The warning signs were always there, of course, but analysts—bless their professionally incurious hearts—spent decades ignoring them with almost Olympian dedication. Some even managed the rhetorical gymnastics of explaining the rot away entirely.
But all plate-spinning acts reach their finale. Once the eggshell propaganda and hopium-fueled bubble finally crack, inflation arrives like a vengeful spirit. And when it does, you don’t get a quick hit of pain and catharsis. No, you get a slow-motion robbery of the entire population as the system spends years—maybe decades—“inflating” the extra money away. That’s the polite, technical term for emptying your pockets while smiling reassuringly.What you see now isn’t even the hors d’oeuvre. It’s the welcoming drink. The one they hand you before you walk into the grand banquet hall, not yet realizing you’re on the menu.