The country has at least two major problems just now: rampant inflation and rampantly increasing murder. (I’m putting to the side for the moment three others, to wit, frantically stoked identity obsession, enforced Woke conformity in academia, and historically inept and deluded political leadership).
In one easy graph, here’s the picture with inflation.
As you can see, the aggregate money supply (M2) is now 50% higher than it was just two years ago. This is not because of Putin, supply bottlenecks, corporate greed, or imprudently low interest rates. It’s because, starting with Trump but at this point mostly under Biden, we decided massively to increase the amount of money out there — mostly by printing millions of government checks — without producing any corresponding increase in goods and services. So now we have inflation at levels never seen by most of our citizens.
But it’s worse than that. Not only did we not increase the supply of goods and services during the antic increase in the money supply, we decreased it through COVID lockdowns — lockdowns we were told initially were a temporary measure to “flatten the curve” of hospital admissions (remember that?), but turned into months, and then more than a year, of intentionally grounding the economy.
So what we have is exactly what you see. Trillions more dollars chasing fewer goods.
Did you enjoy your $1400 Treasury check? I hope so (if you got one — I didn’t), because it’s going to be costing you, and the country, a lot more for a lot longer than the government, and this Administration in particular, ever lets on — or is going to be able to fix just with interest rate manipulation.
And then there’s crime. I have previously documented the steep rise in violent crime over the last several years — a rise the Left no longer bothers to dispute or even fuzz over as “transient” (that particular tentacle of complacency got moved to the inflation front). Today I want to tell you about a different but enormous problem that’s been below the surface for years. It was aptly summarized in this report by the Pew Foundation, a center-left outfit but one that produces honest and useful research. Here it is in one sentence:
Most violent and property crimes in the U.S. are not reported to police, and most of the crimes that are reported are not solved.
Yes, it’s all true. The crime reports you hear about in the MSM aren’t giving you the real story and instead are vastly understating the amount of crime in the country.
The Pew report continues:
In its annual survey, BJS [the Bureau of Justice Statistics] asks crime victims whether they reported their crime to police or not. In 2019, only 40.9% of violent crimes and 32.5% of household property crimes were reported to authorities.
Got that? Only two-fifths of violent crimes and fewer than a third of property crimes even get reported. Do you recall hearing that from Merrick Garland?
BJS notes that there are a variety of reasons why crime might not be reported, including fear of reprisal or “getting the offender in trouble,” a feeling that police “would not or could not do anything to help”…
Gosh, maybe it’s not a great idea to defund the police, at least if you want a fighting chance of getting your property back or at least of getting the thief prosecuted.
Most of the crimes that are reported to police, meanwhile, are not solved, at least based on an FBI measure known as the clearance rate. That’s the share of cases each year that are closed, or “cleared,” through the arrest, charging and referral of a suspect for prosecution, or due to “exceptional” circumstances such as the death of a suspect or a victim’s refusal to cooperate with a prosecution. In 2019, police nationwide cleared 45.5% of violent crimes that were reported to them and 17.2% of the property crimes that came to their attention.
You have less than half a chance that, if and when you report your mugging to the police, they’ll be able to do anything about it, and less than a fith of a chance that the guy who ransacked your house while you were on vacation will ever be prosecuted, and still less that you’ll get anything back.
But wait, there’s more! Of the crimes that are reported, the most frequently committed are the least frequently solved. All of the following are cleared less than a third of the time: Rape/sexual assault (32.1%); robbery (30.5%); theft (18.4%); burglary (14.1%); car theft (13.1%). And Pew did not even attempt to track drug offenses — an all but impossible task given that drug use is in some sense voluntary (until you become addicted, when “voluntary” becomes a cruel joke); and no one turns in his supplier. But over 100,000 of our fellow citizens died from drug overdoses last year, a new and dreadful record.
This is the real working of our supposedly “draconian” criminal justice system. When you take a look at the hard numbers, they tell you that, in terms of providing accountability to hoodlums or justice to victims, it’s less like Draco and more like an underfed poodle.
Suggested headline for story on cancelled travel:
record -breaking gas prices fuel record-braking travel
Inflation is way worse than the published rate. For essentials like gasoline and food, it is much higher than 8%.