Kerby Anderson
While looking at various headlines and reading many of the news articles, I noticed a trend that should be highlighted. It appears we are being conditioned to accept high inflation and become resigned to a poorer standard of living.
A headline last year predicted, “Inflation’s New Normal Will be 4%. Get Used to It.” Her prediction was right. Inflation has been with us and will continue to be with us. Another headline reported that “Consumers Are Getting Used to Higher Inflation.” He assumed that workers would demand higher wages to keep up with inflation. As I mentioned in a previous commentary, wages have not kept up with inflation.
The most recent headline came from a podcast in this country done with the Bank of England’s top economist. He said people in the UK need to accept that they are poorer. He lamented there was a “reluctance to accept that, yes, we’re all worse off.” He was concerned that people demanding pay increases and businesses raising prices will fuel more inflation. Fortunately, the article also quoted another economist that pointed to the “massive expansion” in the money supply as a reason for inflation.
Missing from these stories is who benefits from inflation and who is hurt by it. Remember the classic quote, *“Inflation is the surest way to fertilize the rich man’s field with the sweat of the poor man’s brow.” Increasing prices harm the poor more than the rich, and inflation is stealing the wealth of everyone as the dollar devalues.
God condemns Israel in Isaiah 1:22 by saying, “Your silver has become dross, your best wine mixed with water.” People were cheating each other by adding cheaper metals to their silver and by adding water to their wine. That is why we should NOT be conditioned to accept inflation.
*The quote is credited to Charles Holt Carroll, but also attributed to Daniel Webster.

Penna Dexter
The trend toward de-emphasis on hard work and merit is playing out in large school districts in Nevada, California, Iowa, Virginia and other states. Policies there now require that schools make doing homework optional and give students multiple opportunities to complete tests and assignments. The Wall Street Journal reports that these districts have decided to jettison hard due dates, giving students “more chances to prove they have mastered a subject without being held to arbitrary deadlines.” Students’ knowledge of material is only measured at the end of the term.
This is being done, says The Journal, “in recognition of challenges some children have outside school” — perhaps a job or caring for siblings. A new theory, equitable grading, purportedly eliminates bias toward students living in stable homes. It relies on students’ “intrinsic motivation” in allowing them to decide when, or if, they will turn in homework.
Clark County, which encompasses Las Vegas, is the fifth largest school district in the nation. Laura Jeanne Penrod, who teaches English there, told The Journal, “intrinsic motivation…is the furthest thing from the truth” for students in her 11th grade honors class. With an assignment to write a persuasive essay, she would normally require them to first brainstorm the project and then to write a rough draft. Under the new system, students skip these steps without penalty, but they miss out on the teacher’s guidance along the way.
Alyson Henderson, another Clark County high school English teacher says, “If you go to a job in real life, you can’t pick and choose what tasks you want to do and only do the quote big ones.” Samuel Huang, a straight-A student in the district doesn’t like the new system. He sees AP students skipping class until the exam and says “There’s an apathy that pervades the entire classroom.”
These are top students. Ditching homework is even worse for average students and those who struggle. They need more accountability, not less. 

Kerby Anderson
Many critics in the current generation are making unfair judgments about past generations with an air of moral superiority. I call it generational judgmentalism. Victor Davis Hanson merely says that these critics are self-important and ungracious and have very little gratitude for those in the past that did so much for all of us.
He observes that these “21st-century critics rarely acknowledge their own present affluence and leisure owe much to history’s prior generations whose toil helped create their current comfort.” Of course, we could also add the millions buried in military cemeteries who fought and died for the freedoms we enjoy today.
He also asks several important questions. “What will our grandchildren say of us who dumped on them over $30 trillion in national debt—much of it as borrowing for entitlements for ourselves?” Another is, “What sort of society snoozes as record numbers of murders continue in 12 of its major cities?”
One of the key buzzwords for this generation is “infrastructure.” But Hanson wonders “when was the last time it built anything comparable to Hoover Dam, the interstate highway system, or the California Water Project—much less sent a man back to the moon or beyond?”
It is easy to criticize previous generations while using today’s standards of morality and behavior. It is easy to forget the struggles previous generations had to face because they were not blessed with the numerous technological advances we enjoy today.
It’s easy to tear down. It’s not so easy to rebuild. These are the questions we need to ask of the critics bent on destroying society. They don’t seem to offer anything significant in its place.