It's almost like they are run for the benefit of the ultra rich...

Let them eat cake.

The buck stops nowhere any more and I hear it's approaching the speed of light. The government is the ultimate legal power though and whenever bad stuff is legal we all know who made it legal.

> They should lift incomes, not suppress prices

I think this misses the psychology of inflation.

If wages go up 20%, and prices go up 15%, everyone is better off and got a 5% raise, right?

Go poll people that experienced that and they won't tell you they're celebrating being 5% richer, they'll tell you they're outraged about the 15% inflation.

Psychologically they'll believe they earned that 20% raise through hard work. Putting in extra hours to get that promotion. But then the inflation robbed them of their 20% raise, and turned it into a measly 5% raise. They'll be outraged.

Politicians get this. No one will credit politicians for raising average wages, people will believe they earned their raise themselves. But there's lots of votes available for lowering prices.

the affordability crisis is downstream of inflation. governments should stop inflating the money supply, but of course they won't ever do this because they would then need to generate revenue another way, which would be to raise taxes. inflation is really just a hidden tax and it's easier for them to "tax" without pissing off citizens.

and so really the solution is to reduce spending. which, to some extent, is so obvious it kind of hurts.

A group of people unaffected by a problem will rarely correctly handle the problem. And the further they are away from it, the further from 'correctly handle' will be their handling.

Most of the people responsible for Government decisions are fairly well separated from most crises, hence the crises will continue and grow.