American Tragedy

Most Americans consider themselves socially liberal and fiscally conservative, but they're really socially judgmental and fiscally ignorant.

How else is America the most conservative developed country on issues like the death penalty and abortion and unable to understand basic issues like debt's impact on inflation?

A country that runs on debt is a country where politicians can pander to every single group's demands--regardless of merit or long-term consequences.  Furthermore, peace based on cheap debt is not peace at all--it is a slumbering giant waiting for collection day.  

OECD Inflation

Here's a worrying chart from Bloomberg, but it's incomplete.  Can you figure out why?

Without knowing how much of the inflation is organic or due to debt, and what kinds of debt (government, small business, consumer, auto, education, etc.), the chart is only useful as a singular snapshot.

So many problems today arise from people being unable to see data in context.  As economic transactions have become globalized and therefore more complex, data gatherers and writers are still too specialized.  There is almost no one who can put data in proper context, and so we stumble along, convinced that resolving x will be the cure when x is only one part of an ecosystem we generally don't understand.