Unless President Trump reverses course, the "Lower Prices Bigger Paychecks" banner that hung behind him at his "affordability" speech this month will be remembered as being to economic policy what President George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" banner was to foreign policy.

According to a Politico poll, many Americans are having difficulty paying for food, housing, transportation, and health care. Thirty-seven percent of Americans cannot afford to take their family to a professional sports event while 46 percent of Americans cannot afford airfare for a vacation.

For an increasing number of Americans, the affordability crisis is compounded by the firing crisis. Last month, approximately 120,000 small business workers lost their jobs — the highest one month decline in small business employment since the covid lockdowns. Large businesses including Amazon, Verizon, Target, and Apple are also laying off workers.

The affordability crisis began in 1971 when President Nixon severed the last link between the US dollar and gold. This removed any restraint on the Federal Reserve's ability to pump money into the economy, leading to a continuous dollar devaluation. The decline in the dollar's purchasing power is the real cause of the rise in prices and decline in living standards.

Fiat currency may be bad for the average American, but it is great for the welfare-warfare state and the special interests that benefit from it. This is because the fiat money system enables the Federal Reserve to monetize high levels of government debt via purchases of Treasury securities, thus making possible the explosion in government spending and power we have experienced the past fifty years. The fiat money system is also responsible for the bubble-boom-bust economy that has plagued America.