There's a disturbing trend beginning to take form in the West, the specter of overt Socialist policies. To be clear, there have been socialist policies in place in many Western countries for decades in the form of entitlements, but recent posturing from Justin Trudeau in Canada and the Mayor of Chicago here in the United States may prove to be "mask-off" moments that accelerate the normalization of full blown socialist policies.

In Canada, Trudeau has come out and blamed grocery stores for rising costs and is threatening to levy higher taxes on the industry if they do not come to him with a satisfactory plan to lower prices by Canada's Thanksgiving holiday in early October. He is using rhetoric that would make Karl Marx blush by using misdirection to accuse grocery store chains of price gauging by pointing at their increased profits. Totally ignoring the fact that grocery store margins are notoriously low and that profits will rise in nominal terms when inflation runs rampant throughout an economy as it has in Canada over the last couple of years. This misdirection completely neglects to consider the fact that Trudeau's policies have led to the price increases he is blaming on the owners of grocery store chains.

Trudeau has made it nearly impossible for the people of Canada to utilize the incredible oil and gas resources they have beneath their land, which has artificially increased the cost of energy for Canadians. Since energy is the key raw input that enables any industry to operate smoothly, it makes sense that higher prices at the energy layer would translate to higher prices at the end of a supply chain of groceries. To make matters worse, in their effort to appease the cult of climate hysterics, the Trudeau administration has demonized Canada's farmers and made it harder for them to operate by levying burdensome carbon taxes on their operations. This is yet another policy that adds pressure to the prices of end products that Canadians purchase at grocery stores.

Outside of these terrible policies that make it harder for Canadian energy and food producers to bring their products to market at lower costs, Canada's monetary base expanded from $96.98B to $296.94B between 2020 and today. At one point in 2021 it almost hit $500b. Put another way, there are three times as many Canadian dollars sloshing around the Canadian economy than there were three and half years ago. When you inject your economy with that much money in very short order, prices are going to rise. More dollars fighting for less goods will increase prices. It's a simple equation that Trudeau either doesn't understand or is willfully ignoring to deflect blame. It is absolutely disgusting that he is trying to pin price increases on productive grocery stores when it is abundantly clear that his asinine policies have been the main drivers.

In Chicago, due to an increase in shoplifting that is being driven by a complete unwillingness to prosecute "petty" crimes and burdensome taxes many grocery store chains are deciding to leave the city. In response to this mass exodus, Mayor Brandon Johnson is floating the idea of state-run grocery stores to ensure that citizens of Chicago have access to essential goods. Highlighting yet again how people in power with a Socialist bent are completely clueless when it comes to the root cause of the problems they are facing.

History has shown that when the state steps in to run things that should be delegated to the free market things go terribly wrong. Venezuela nationalized their oil and gas industry when their Socialist government took over, which resulted in the degradation of the industries infrastructure and production dropping by 66%. Soviet Russia and Mao's China took nationalization to the nth degree, which resulted in tens of millions of unnecessary deaths and economic stagnation for decades on end. To think that the city of Chicago can essentially nationalize their grocery sector with different results is absolutely ludicrous.

The rising trend of overt Socialists policies in the West is something that should scare the living shit out of anyone. The outcomes of these policies are very predictable. We've seen how dangerous this level of central planning can be when it is employed. There is no reason whatsoever that we should be trying to make Socialism work in 2023. Yet, here we are.

At the end of the day, all of these policies are being thrust onto the public because we are stuck with a political class that is unwilling to admit that their policies are the reason for all of the suffering many people in the West are experiencing today. Not only that, but this political class has access to money printers that enable them to continue their central planning experiments that lead to a misallocation and destruction of capital that makes everyone worse off. This is the core of the issue. These people need their money printers taken away from them. Luckily for us, that's exactly what bitcoin is here to do.

Final thought...

Ready for a family trip to the gym.