The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

>Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity has been eliminated for all goods and services, but that all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services

There are multiple cities in England where population has decreased but house prices increased. During lockdown 700k people left London, but house prices kept going up.

1) https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/12/02/458222801/epis.... A great Planet Money episode about how Brazil combatted hyperinflation by just replacing their currency.

2. https://slate.com/business/1998/08/baby-sitting-the-economy..... A Paul Krugman Slate article about a 1978 journal article that uses the example of a babysitting coop to illustrate the way that the monetary supply can have ramifications on the real economy.

3. And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1586483811/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_.... A much longer read, but this is book about the economic crisis in Argentina is one of my favorite economics books, and also teaches you a lot about the international monetary system as well.

Post scarcity perhaps exists in some richest parts of selected countries (California? Hamburg?), but even in those places it is often just an illusion. Roads still have potholes and there are homeless on streets. Schools still struggle with supplies. There are also people who work, but whose work does not allow them to get a real place to live, or health services. Then there are other things that are difficult to measure: for example overworking, or drug addiction, which perhaps dont mean scarcity of goods, but seem to be connected with scarcity of services or scarcity of quality of life.

People from the rich countries consume more natural resources than the few billion in developing, or third world countries. What happens now is already completely unsustainable and causes multiple problems: global warming, loss of natural habitats, dying species...

There are billions of people in Africa or India, who dont consume even 10% of the resources that an average American consumes - but they sure as hell would prefer to get to that level.

I imagine that it is easy to make comments about post scarcity when you live in some mega-rich bubble in California, but this is not true even for USA, not to mention the rest of the world.

People in poor countries dont have cars YET and they sure want to drive those big trucks that drink a lot of fuel per mile. But where will this fuel come from? And where does the CO2 go?

And in my opinion inflation is a result of incompetence, of planned policy by central banks to make the rich richer, while the rest to gets poorer. As much as I dont like bitcoin (multiple reasons, economical, unsustainable in real use..), it is right with one thing: the supply is known in advance and finite. We currently live in a time where money is printed out of thin air to save the too-big-to-fail banks and to pump the stockmarket prices, so rich dont lose anything. All of this at the expense of the middle class. The poor already dont have anything. And the middle class is shrinking: from one side those are the only ones who pay taxes, from other, those are the only ones who dont have real tools to defend against inflation.

I mean, of course you will write that one can gamble on the stockmarket, but weren't saving accounts supposed to be the thing for those who are risk averse? I mean, if someone from middle class gambles and loses you will write that it is their own fault. If they dont gamble - and put money on a savings account (so lose money) - also their own fault.

Currently the central banks create inflation higher than interest on saving accounts, what in my opinion is a very big problem. Since the central banks entered the cycle of bailing out bubbles, more and more money will be created: new and new bubbles will have to be bailed out.. and as I said, at expense of the middle class. Who just get screwed by inflation.

That's like totally wrong. Goods provide some value to the customer, and that determines what they are willing to pay for it. If I wake up a millionaire tomorrow, that doesn't mean I am suddenly willing to spend $500 the same haircut that was $50 yesterday.