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Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

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Re: Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

#241

Post by testacpwoek »

esoterica wrote: post #232
testacpwoek wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaningless when housing costs have soared. They've made wage gains because it's literally not worth it to work for $8/hr anymore and companies were unable to find workers.

Wages for the lowest quintile have gone up in real terms, meaning adjusted for inflation (including shelter costs). None of your economic beliefs are grounded reality, you just make up beliefs that flatter your politics and downvote everyone who disagrees with you.

I never downvote, your ad hominem is false and shows your emotionally charged mentality.

> None of your economic beliefs are grounded reality

If you think reality is defined in economic reports I have a bridge to sell you.

Re: Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

#242

Post by NikolaNovak »

pdonis wrote: post #208
wolverine876 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what do you use that's better? Your personal experiences don't tell us much about the other 320+ million people.

> So what do you use that's better? If the government would stop trying to micromanage the economy, then it wouldn't need to find some aggregate statistic to use, no matter how misleading or counterproductive it was.

>>government would stop trying to micromanage the economy

Right, but some of us are not religious, so proposals needs a little bit more than the blind faith of "take your hands off the wheel and I'm sure everything will magically be better for everybody, particularly the poor".

Re: Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

#243

Post by scottjad »

> Once the central bank said that inflation would be 2%

This article is confusing. It makes it sound like NZ set a target of 2% inflation, when in actuality they set a target range of 0-2%, so 2% was the ceiling not the target.

https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/confs/2018/mcdermott-wil... figure 1 and table 1 makes it more clear.

Naturally central bankers have been happy to turn a ceiling into a target/floor.

Re: Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

#244

Post by rufus_foreman »

wolverine876 wrote: post #206
npoc wrote: post #45

The more money the banks print, the richer they get, with the side-effect that prices rise (they make the monetary units less scarce and worth less). 2-3% just happens to be the most they can get away with in the long term without the population getting concerned. What the general population don't realise is that the value of goods and services are going down over time, due to efficiency increases, at a rate of aroun…

> money the banks print Banks don't print money. The government can.

They create money. So can you.

Re: Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

#245

Post by FactKnower69 »

WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #230
cjbgkagh wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this is satire, either way I had a good laugh.

Yeah, I was torn but his last paragraph is 100% satire > On the other hand, our political institutions did an amazing job of getting the US through a global pandemic without even a recession. There are serious problems, such as housing and education prices, but I don't think anyone could have predicted how well things went economically. Just wait lol ..

As of this week the yield curve has been inverted for a longer period than ever before in history, that's how you know the economy is healthier than ever

Re: Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

#246

Post by greedo »

rootusrootus wrote: post #70
jokethrowaway wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe leading economists didn't see this coming. Even if they didn't originally, it's been clear now, for decades. This is the system working as intended, making government spending easy and gradually worsening poor's people lives.

Are poor people's lives objectively worse now than they were, say, 40 years ago?

40 years ago I could work a summer job at minimum wage and earn enough to pay a full year's tuition at UCSD. Doing the same thing in 2023 paid for less than 1/3 of the tuition.

Re: Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

#247

Post by FactKnower69 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #203
Jensson wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can objectively afford less housing, education, healthcare and such things than 40 years ago. They can afford better computers, but that is just thanks to technology, other than technology making things cheaper their lives are worse.

"Housing" ... mostly a NIMBY problem. AKA not a small group of capitalists ruining it for everyone else, but a bunch of soccer moms who hate any densification and insist that their neighborhood must stay the same forever, weaponizing environmental laws to stop any development. Notably, cities that build nonetheless, be it Austin, TX, or Warsaw, Poland, buck this otherwise very widespread trend. "Education, healthcare…

At any given time of year there are ~23 empty housing units for every single homeless person in the US, even close to 3 per homeless person in Los Angeles and New York City; somehow the constant, coordinated line of "supply constraints" and "grr NIMBYs!" doesn't hold up to the actual data

Re: Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

#248

Post by VirusNewbie »

esoterica wrote: post #223
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I think CPI numbers are all hogwash All the younger people I know in less than stellar jobs are really hurting. These people were never well off but were comfortable before the pandemic. But now they’re making hard decisions for basic necessities and grinding down the quality of their lives.

The lowest income workers have seen the largest wage gains over the course of the pandemic.

right but they're still made poorer due to M2 increasing and not being able to leverage into assets with debt.

Re: Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

#249

Post by wolverine876 »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #244
wolverine876 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> money the banks print Banks don't print money. The government can.

They create money. So can you.

If you mean by lending it, etc., that is regulated by the government - interest rates, reserves, oversight, much more.

Re: Why the 2% inflation target? (2023)

#250

Post by chowchowchow »

pdonis wrote: post #220
qwytw wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's sensible to use gold or housing as a measure of value - they are both extremely mature markets with a relatively constant supply/demand ratio Look at how the price of gold changed between 2000 and 2020. It's not at all constant (it's actually more volatile than the dollar) > I'd argue that using the dollar as a measure of value would be absurd, Perhaps. Still less absurd than using gold for that. > When they t…

> Look at how the price of gold changed between 2000 and 2020. It's not at all constant (it's actually more volatile than the dollar) It's pretty rich for you to be using the word "absurd" to describe what other people are posting, when you come out with this. Let me translate into actual plain English: the price of gold in dollars has gone up quite a lot between 2000 and 2020. (But note that it still hasn't reached…

As was noted above. If your claims are true, then inflation was 800% in the 2000s and then 0% in the 2010s. There's clearly market supply/demand driving changes in gold price, not simply exchange rate fluctuation.
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