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Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

yarn.pranshum.com

401–410 of 550 posts

Re: Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> History teaches us that inflation will continue as long as the government keeps printing fiat money. Of course, that is almost a tautology. The devil is in the details. No inflation is bad because the economy stops. High inflation is bad because of erosion of purchasing power and negative impact on nearly every participant in the economy. So what do you do to get that sweet spot of about 1-2% inflation? I'd say rai…

Have you ever noticed you get raises roughly based on last year's inflation and not an estimation of next year's inflation? When the money printers print the people who touch the new money first get to buy assets before the price inflation occurs. Then, once the new money eventually circulates to the peasants, they get to use it to buy goods and services at the new, higher prices. Inflation is a wealth transfer from…

Isn't it amazing that Austrian economists completely ignore that providing liquidity creates costs for the providers of liquidity?

Businesses give money value by offering products and services, meanwhile the holder of money expects the business to keep providing this costly service at no cost. In other words, there is a constant flow of free liquidity provisioning services toward the holders of money which makes the providers of liquidity poorer and the holders of liquidity richer if they market that liquidity. After all, money is worth more than the purchasing power it represents, it can buy anything available in the payments network. Money that buys bananas and apples is more valuable than money that only buys apples even if both have the same amount of purchasing power. Since liquidity is paid for by the general enterprising public, the holders who have none of the costs can just loan out and market their liquidity for a price and they get to pretend that they are providing a service, even though they haven't done anything for it in any way.

People who still have a need to transact must now pay the costs of liquidity to someone who doesn't provide it when they borrow money.

The person who borrows money is now stuck with the costs of liquidity even if they spend it. When they spend it, they no longer benefit from liquidity but they must still pay for the liquidity that someone else owns. That person then can lend his liquidity out without paying for it. The end result is that liquidity costs must be paid twice.

This is an endlessly compounding system. Like a pyramid scheme. Money acts like a perpetuity where the yield is paid out in liquidity which can through borrowing be turned into money. Previous perpetuities are paid by creating new perpetuities.

Very interesting scheme and Austrian economists are even denying the above so they are complicit.

Re: Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

#402
post #386

In California, people fitting certain economic criteria are now being issued $1000 checks for inflation relief. This is beyond ludicrous. We have printed so much money, the only solution is to... print more? It's almost like it is all a sneaky backdoor to letting the government redistribute wealth without real oversight...

Giving people a one-time bonus never made sense to me. They’ll feel rich, spend it all, and be back in their previous situation next month.

Sounds like a decent recipe for boosting the economy, assuming the supply side capacity is available: injects a bunch of demand, but at the same time, precisely by being a one-time measure, discourages price hikes.

Re: Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

#403
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I go to ford.com and look at their basic truck, the 2023 Maverick, I see "starting at $22,195". So if a 1962 truck truly sold for $2000, the inflation seems to account for entirely the price increase. And I'm pretty sure everyone will agree a 2023 Maverick is superior to a 1962 F-100 in every conceivable aspect. Housing and healthcare are better examples of goods or services whose prices have increased faster th…

Idk.. First, you can't get the old vehicle new for cheap. That option is no longer available. You do get an objectively better one, but value is fundamentally subjective. Marginal economics bridges this gap with consumer choice, but if no choice is available then I don't think you can assume consumers are better off. In any case, I think inflation is a backwards lens through which to examine vehicle prices. The prima…

Cars don’t break down as much and last much longer. A 20 year old car nowadays can still be perfectly usable. So in effectively they did get cheaper, just buy used (at least that was the case until 2020..)

Re: Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most people rarely need a pickup truck for its specifically design utility. They likely just want a safer car which is essentially an arms race at that point. I think less pickup trucks on the road would be a good thing considering how the majority of people drive.

> They likely just want a safer car Are modern pickup trucks objectively safer than modern cars, or is it more about the perception of driving something that feels it's half way to being an armoured vehicle? In Europe almost no-one drives around in a truck. Even the tradespeople (carpenters, plumbers, roofers, gardeners, heating installers, you name it) all drive light vans, not trucks.

> Are modern pickup trucks objectively safer than modern cars

In a collision with a significantly lighter/smaller car? Usually

Re: Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Now the stripper can't afford to buy food and there's less demand for essentials after all. I'm still not getting how this helps?

Just because the stripper can no longer afford food doesn't mean that food sellers will be able to lower their price. Supply issues can't be solved by price changes. Taken to the extreme, people will die of starvation until the population adjusts, so still in the long run demand and supply will meet at the price point.

But the people who were pocketing those higher profits and salaries back when gas prices went down, now do have room to cut prices though and still make money. It can't go both ways.

Anyway starving people still have labor to sell, which they will sell as cheaply as they have to, driving everyone's costs down and allowing them to cut prices after all.

Re: Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

#406
The only thing we learnt from history was that *we learn nothing from the history*.

For the past decades, what were the central banks all over the world doing? Nothing but printing money. Whenever there was a (economical) crisis, the only measure was printing money, *nothing but printing money*. Were the problems resolved ever? Never!!. They event pretended to be innocent by asking "why there were no inflation". Of course, there was no inflation as the design of CPI, the indicator of indicator, was flawed. CPI does not consider price of assets, otherwise sky would be the limit. There were crisis simply because the money went to the people who didn't it that much. Printing much made things worse as most of the printed money went to those didn't need it much, but nonetheless had postponed them a lot.

Such pretending to be dumb game could have being played a lot longer if not the pandemic which made them had no choice but printing money and sending them to those in need. And all of a sudden, those who needed the money most had so much cash they had never imaged before? What were they going to do? For sure spending them all.

Now here is the long *expected* inflation, what are central banks planning to deal with it? Increasing interest rate to where it should be? Seems too hard, let's print more money!

Re: Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

#407
post #330

In California, people fitting certain economic criteria are now being issued $1000 checks for inflation relief. This is beyond ludicrous. We have printed so much money, the only solution is to... print more? It's almost like it is all a sneaky backdoor to letting the government redistribute wealth without real oversight...

Elsewhere in this subthread I pointed out that California is not printing money; it's spending surplus from 2021. California cannot print money bc we use US dollars and not CA dollars. But I think a more interesting aspect of this is the cynical way language around the same idea has changed. The Franchise Tax Board is calling them a "tax refund", though your "refund" is based on your income being low, rather than you…

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Re: Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

#408
post #97
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently the history of Weimar, Zimbabwe and Turkey don't provide proof enough that high inflation is bad.

theres a difference between high inflation and hyperinflation. which developed country had hyperinflation? (even turkey doesnt have it)

I think that Weimar Germany was "developed" by the standards of the 1920s.

Re: Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

#409
Inflation is high 'cause China. We are more interconnected and globalized than anytime in the past, thus the past is not a good model.

China is still in lockdown and their output isn't as high as pre-pandemic levels. Everything China makes pervades into everything we do in developed society. From high-tech chips to low-tech plastic stuffs.

Until China decides to open back up, prices will continue to increase. And until then rates will continue to go up to try to incentivize people to save.

I see this alleviating in 2nd half of 2022, thanks to China relaxing Covid restrictions.

Re: Inflation is at a 40 year high. What can history teach us?

#410
post #23
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> total chaos, riots, and unrest looks like we come full circle

Not really. We don't have the assassinations. The national guard doesn't shoot people; that's been democratized to police and private citizens. The big violent demonstrations are gone. What passes for it these days is a pale shadow. One "benefit" of the increased inequality is that people making less than the median are too exhausted to demonstrate, much less rebel. Rebellion has always been the act of those who belo…

> The big violent demonstrations are gone.

Um... didn't the biggest riots in American history just happen two years ago?

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