Infrastructure Inflation: Dark Before Darker

Only a fool, igknowamus, or liar measures inflation in funny numbers on funny paper. These are mere symbols of our worktime that are readily manipulated by habitual politicians and economic streetwalkers, aka, necronomists. The true, eternal cost of living is the time we must work to have the necessities of life. Time is the universal constant that transcends the boundaries of centuries and borders. Time is the thread in the fabric of life.

Who cares what the money is called. Would you rather be a millionaire who has to work 16 hours a day for only a loaf of bread, or, a shoeshiner whose $1/hour wages byes a loaf of bread, a pound of kielbasa, and three pickles (which was what this writer earned and ate in the 1950s as shoeshine boy).  What counts is whether you are having to work more or fewer hours for your daily bread.

Inflation indexes the rise in worktime to buy your needs. As time inflation increases, one's time is cheapened as one has less free time to enjoy life. Inflation cheapens one's financial savings: When one saves 100 workhours of wages in a bank account only to find later that the savings will only buy 50 hours of goods and services, that is real inflation. Forget the funny numbers on funny paper--fools and their time soon part.

Since 1980, annual US household income rose in funny numbers on funny paper. During the same period, to maintain the 1980 middle-class standard of living, the household has had to annually work 12 more weeks--almost a 25% inflation or cheapening of the middle-class time. (One must remember inflation's cheapening is echo'd in its semantic cousins: flattery [cheap compliment] and flatulence [cheap doodoo].

Rising CO2 causes widespread time-wasting problems at all level of earthly existence. These worsening, time-cancers are infrastructure inflation affecting everyone, especially the poor individuals and nations. People are igknowant, choosing to win economic battles but lose the environmental war of saving life on earth from global dying. Low information thinkers argue we can't economically afford to fight climate change: French yellow-vest protesters wanting a reversal of a climate fuel tax.