So let me get this straight.

Inflation is bad, because it means higher prices and less affordable goods.

Inflation is currently going up.

The immediate reason is because America has started a new oil war in the Middle East.

That's provided the big oil corporations a pretext to put up the prices for oil and gas.

We're in a climate crisis, *20 years* after the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth came out.

Despite this, we're still largely dependent on oil and gas for (commuter and freight) transport, heating, and energy. Not to mention plastics.

So the price of anything using oil or gas in its production is going up.

At the same time, the mass rollout of chatbots is raising the price of electronic chips and components. Also energy, including gas.

At the same time, house prices are going up because of an ongoing property speculation bubble. A housing shortage is a contributing factor.

Australia's comfortable oligopolies (Colesworths, the big four banks, Qantas & Virgin, etc.) are likely to use this as a pretext to put up prices and make bigger profits.

So the Reserve Bank's solution to prices going up, and things becoming less affordable, is…

To raise interest rates.

This will make it more expensive to buy solar panels and EVs in an oil crisis.

It will make it more expensive to build housing in a housing crisis.

It will likely lead to higher unemployment.

And it will push up the costs of rents and mortgages, increasing the cost of living.

So to improve the cost of living, we need to increase the cost of living.

Because rich people are making things less affordable, so our system kicks working people.

Am I alone in thinking this just doesn't make sense?

#auspol #uspol #Iran #politics #news #war #capitalism