Watch your pockets folks.
Politicians in Washington, no matter what party your affiliation, believe that the money in your pocket is really their money. They need it to spend on new programs, not because they necessarily care about you, but because they want to remain in power by buying your next vote.
Since you are already paying federal income tax, social security, possibly state and local income tax, sales tax, excise taxes (gasoline etc), property tax, and everything else they have thought they could tax …. including your death tax, they have finally run out of options to tax you. But that doesn’t stop them from spending. They just create money out of thin air and add it to the deficit.
By the mid 1970’s, the big deficits began when the country exited the Vietnam War, which was mostly paid for by federal deficits. In 1969, the federal budget deficit was 3.2 billion. By 1976 it had risen to $74 billion. A scary number at that time. But this was also the era when retirees with $100,000 in the bank could purchase a jumbo certificate of deposit paying 16-18% annual interest. You could live quite comfortably in retirement with your social security payment, jumbo interest, and back then your company pension. Of course, those of us working had to pay 9-12% mortgage interest and were struggling with inflation.
Move ahead to 2021. I hope you enjoy the Fed’s gift of a 2.7% annual mortgage interest rate. Meanwhile your savings, if you have any and are foolish enough to store it in a bank might earn 0.1% annual interest. The Federal deficit is posted at a theoretical annual $1 Trillion (a lie) ; the accumulated U.S.Federal deficit is posted at just passing $20 trillion (also not quite true).
So as you watch the price of meat, dairy, gas, housing (rentals or purchases) etc. skyrocket … keep in mind that this is your friendly government destroying the value of those hard-earned dollars sitting in your bank account currently earning a whopping 0.1% interest when inflation is running – depending upon who is writing the estimate and their spin – 10 to 20% annual. They blame the pandemic. Good luck to those of you on fixed incomes, retirees, and most of the rest of the country living paycheck to paycheck. 