The Biggest Tax of All: How Inflation Quietly Steals Your Money Every Day

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Forget income tax, payroll tax, or property tax—the biggest tax Americans pay isn’t listed on any return. It’s inflation. Silent, hidden, and relentless, inflation erodes your purchasing power year after year while politicians celebrate more spending and more debt.
In this episode, Chris breaks down why a dollar saved 30 years ago is worth barely half today, how constant borrowing and money printing quietly confiscates your wealth, and why the claim that “the deficit is down” means nothing when the national debt keeps exploding.
This is why cash loses value, prices double over time, and why sitting still financially is a guaranteed losing strategy. Inflation isn’t an accident—it’s a stealth tax that most people never see coming. Understanding it is the first step to protecting yourself from it.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Mirror Mirror on the Wall. What is the biggest tax
of them all? Is it income tax? Is it property tax?
Is it payroll tax?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Nope?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Now the biggest tax of them all is a hidden
tax that again I believe most Americans have no idea.
It's called inflation. That's right, that's right. Inflation is the
biggest tax that's out there. And this is part of
the conspiracy to keep people poor and stupid. Again, they
don't like it. The powers that be don't like people

(00:50):
understanding how money works. We're going to play a game
of pretend right now. This is the way I'm going
to explain this to everybody. Let's say, let's say thirty
years ago. Thirty years ago, you, let's say you graduated

(01:11):
from college and your grandfather gave you one thousand dollars cash,
and for whatever reason it may be, whatever you got
a job, whatever it may you stuck it in a drawer.
You're stuck it in a drawer at your mom and
dad's house, underneath something in a book, and you forgot
about it. You forgot about it, and you come home,

(01:35):
You come home for Christmas, come home for Christmas. You
going to your parents' house. You got the kids with you,
and you're showing your kids, you know, your old room again,
and you're going there and you're like, oh my god,
you discover that one thousand dollars. You're like, oh my god,
I can't believe it. In thirty years ago I put
in here and I completely forgot about it. Well, that

(01:56):
thousand dollars, it's not a thousand dollars any more. Okay.
I want you to think of it this way. I
want you to think of that one thousand dollars as
being chopped in half, chopped in half, half, half is gone.
So yeah, it may look like a thousand dollars, but

(02:16):
it's only five hundred dollars. So it is, it's all
it's worth. Where to go? Where to go? Who took it? Well? Again,
the government essentially did. They're thirty eight trillion dollars in debt,
and because they continue to debase the currency, and they

(02:40):
continue to print and spend and print and spend. It's
a tax, is it not? That money is not going
to go as far as it did thirty years ago.
It's gone. I try to get this across because it
and you're hearing it now again a part of this

(03:03):
grand conspiracy to keep people poor and stupid. We've gone
two trillion dollars further into debt this year. The administration
is patting themselves on the back saying that the deficit
is down, and I'm saying we're two trillion dollars further
into debt. The deficit is down, We're in a hole, okay,

(03:25):
and we're still digging. Okay. If you want to get
yourself out of a hole that you're in. Digging isn't
necessarily the best idea, my right, but that's what we
continue to do. It was funny. I've been trying to
get this across the people as far as investing and

(03:46):
investments are concerned, since we started Markowski Investments and we
gave the heisman to the sixty to forty portfolio, well
aware at what was going on, especially after after September eleventh,
and we decided to go full out. Let's invade everybody.
Team America, World Police, borrow, borrow, borrow, borrow, spend, spend, spend, spend, spend.

(04:11):
Your money loses loses about five percent a year, every
single year. And you may say the economy grows, let's
say two percent, because we don't have that nineteen eighties
nineteen nineties dynamic growth anymore. That's a big headwind, right,

(04:33):
So basically what happens price is double every ten years,
every ten years, so your savings essentially are cut in
half in real terms every fifteen years. And I try
to explain this to people, this is why cash is trash,

(04:54):
and you need to be invested properly, and it needs
to be put into proper sp active. You're not just
paying your income tax. That's paying your stay tax if
you're in one of those states. You're not just paying
your FIKA tax. You're not just paying your property tax,
your tax on your cell phone, building, all this other stuff.

(05:15):
While you sit in that chair that you're at right now.
You got money in a bank account, you're losing money.
You cash loose a bankage, and your wallet, you're losing money.
It's they're going in there every single day. They're going
essentially going in there every single day and take a
little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit here,
a little bit there. That'sflation. That's what it is. The goal.

(05:37):
The goal should be zero. As I've stated ad nauseam,
and I know we're doing a lot of this this
year end stuff here, it's important to understand how kind
of the world works and money works. The goal should
be zero, zero percent inflation. Dollars should be a unit
of measurement, not a way that we can secretively steal

(06:02):
from the American people, because that's what they're doing. Watchdog
and Wall Street dot Com