Politics & Power Quote by William E. Simon

Simon’s line works because it indicts inflation not as a mysterious economic curse, but as a democratic self-portrait. “Love-hate relationship” is the bait: it sounds like psychology, not policy. Then he snaps it into place with the punchline - Americans “love everything that causes it.” The wit is prosecutorial. Inflation becomes less a technical failure than a moral contradiction: voters demand low prices while cheering the spending, tax cuts, easy credit, and political sugar highs that make low prices impossible.

The intent is to shift blame away from faceless institutions and onto public appetite. Coming from a Treasury Secretary in the 1970s, the subtext is especially pointed. That era’s inflation wasn’t abstract; it was daily life - oil shocks, wage-price spirals, and a sense that the government had lost control of the dashboard. Simon, a fiscal hawk, is arguing that technocrats can’t “fix” inflation if the electorate punishes every painful remedy. He’s also preemptively defending unpopular cures: tighter money, restrained budgets, slower growth, higher unemployment in the short run. If you “love” the causes, you’re complicit in the consequences.

Rhetorically, the sentence is a compact trap. It flatters the listener with the obvious (“they hate inflation”) and then removes the alibi. The real target isn’t ignorance; it’s preference. People don’t accidentally vote for inflation. They vote for policies that feel good now and outsource the bill to later, then act shocked when later arrives with a price tag.