Ben Stein Dreemz
Paying Through Nose I
t is a scary day here in beverly hills. the sun is out and the temperature is perfect. But there is a problem which all of my friends are talking
about: prices. We are having an inflation which, as George M. Humphrey, a Treasury Secretary under Dwight Eisenhower, once famously said, could curl your hair. My barber says it’s so bad that he feels suicidal. He
cannot afford his rent, which is an amazing $4,000 per month for a two-bedroom in West Hollywood, which is a fine neighborhood, but nowhere near as prestigious as Beverly Hills. He is supposed to buy tires for his daughters, and six months ago, a set of four was $550. Now, the same set, with the same warranty, is exactly $1,000. He is so upset about it that when we talked, tears came into his eyes. One of my best friends had lunch
with me at the Beverly Hills Hotel. To save money, she said, she would only get a small salad and French fries. The fries were a small order. They had a dressing of
truffles. The price: $35. Now, don’t get me wrong. The cafe there is my
favorite restaurant on Earth. The service is superb. But $35 for fries? One of my pals has a terrible back problem from a
car accident. She should be resting quietly. She cannot because her medical bills are killing her. Her doctors must live, too. But should medical bills be so terrifying? It all reminds me of the rise of Der Führer.
The mental state of the Germans was severely undermined by the unheard of inflation after the German loss in World War I and the cruel terms of the Versailles Treaty. It left Germans begging for a “strong” leader. The
nutcase, Adolf Hitler, promised price stability. He won leadership of the Reich. Soon thereafter came World War II, the Holocaust,
and a Germany that threatened the peace of the whole world. Scholars say that inflation paved the ground for the disaster. Inflation makes people scared. I see it right now in
our glorious America. What can we do about it? It happened before when my hero, Richard M.
42 NEWSMAX | JANUARY 2026
Inflation makes people scared. I see it right now in our glorious
Nixon, was president. The Democrat-controlled Congress and the media demanded wage price controls. Nixon resisted as long as he could. But when Arthur Burns, then-head of the Federal
Reserve, also called for controls, Nixon gave in, and in 1971, instituted controls. Any smart economist knew that price controls
always make inflation worse, not better. It’s basic free market economics. Nixon knew it. He often talked about it with the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. That person was my dear father, Herbert Stein, a supersmart man and the best father I have ever heard of. It was my incredibly good
America. What can we do about it?
fortune to have him as my dad at the same moment in history that I was working at the White House as a speechwriter for Nixon. To give you an idea of what
a great man my father was, in 1969, a story appeared that the
Department of Defense — now the Department of War — was going to test shoot new bullets into dog pounds. My wife and I were horrified. I called my Pop and told him of this ghastly plan.
He immediately called Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense, and told him what a bad plan this was — to test bullets by killing man’s and woman’s best friend. He abandoned the plan. On another occasion, I was given an extremely
complex speech assignment about taxes. It was on deadline and far beyond what I knew about the subject. To save time, I went to my father. He was sitting at
his desk smoking one of the 60 cigarettes he typically “enjoyed” every day. “If you have nothing more important to do right
now, perhaps you could help me with this task,” I said. He looked at me sadly. “Benjy,” he said, as he
inhaled so deeply that he turned half of his cigarette into ash. “What do you think I have to do that’s more important than helping my only son?” Inflation is a nightmare, but love for a father is
more important. It went surprisingly well. Inflation was stopped in its tracks. The economy was not stymied and boomed.
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