91–100 of 518 posts
The thing to keep in mind is that what really matters is stuff : The goods and services that add economic value to our lives, like shoes, houses, food, sports games, accounting services, haircuts, etc. Also called the metaphorical "pie." Inflation is bad to the extent that it causes the total stuff we produce to go down or to become more poorly distributed, and good to the extent that it does the opposite. And a shri…
Rampant inflation is a problem. The inflation seen now in many places is not quite there. 7% is higher than we would like, but if the alternative is to have shrinking GDP and massive unemployment, I would rather have some inflation. In the US at least, a lot of the raise in the US CPI is due to rising energy costs (predicted months ago due to cold winter in Asia), used and new cars (the infamous chip shortages), and…
> but if the alternative is to have shrinking GDP and massive unemployment, I would rather have some inflation. This is the general problem with central banking. Politicians and governments will ALWAYS take action to "save the economy", whether that is a small downturn or a big one. There's too much pressure to not use the magic money printer. Short term election cycles incentivize everyone to just fix the problem as…
When the government borrows money it borrows it at an interest rate. When rates are low, like close to 0% low like they are now, that's exactly when you want to borrow money. Want to fix bridges and invest in things? Now is the time to borrow money to do that. It also has the added benefit of making past debt cheaper. This scenario that we're in is made even more interesting by the fact that many governments also had to print tons and tons of money. While we're now over 100% debt-to-GDP, it's not unheard of and not so catastrophic that we can't recover from.
I'm also unsure about rising wages here. If they continue to rise won't prices continue to rise to reflect wages? I'm also of the opinion that slow sales from 2020/2021 + supply chain issues have caused companies to raise prices. I don't think cereal actually needs to be more expensive. Shareholders do though.
Many here will fight and bicker and kick and scream but Bitcoin is the only solution to the absolute ruin being dangled over the millenial and younger generations (primarily because it disconnects state/human control of the currency and programmatically enforces a cap on issuance while ensuring transparency and consensus on a global level).
The walrus being a far-left MMT proposing place wrote this when inflation was at 3.5% or so. It's now much higher and very evidently out of control. The article quotes Mark Carney, as if he were on their side. BoE under Carney have raised interest rates twice: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/interest-rate and that hasn't even dented inflation. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/inflation-cpi I be…
Monthly inflation is slowing, and is at an annualized 4.8%. We had a big spike in the summer/fall that's still showing up in our annual figures, but inflation itself is coming under control.
Inflation means the fed doesn't have to pop the asset, real estate and commodities bubbles. Those bubbles softly deflate as their prices only drop in real dollars as the USD loses value. A hundred million voters don't wake up feeling poorer, unless they're the suckers who own the fixed rate debt.
As a moron who is currently holding lots of cash, I'm hoping the fed will have the fortitude to fight inflation. History shows they do not, however.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wages going up is not what the article is talking about, wages becoming available is what the article is talking about, as seen by our extremely robust jobs numbers.
But we are already at low unemployment before COVID and all the spending; we don't need inflation to drive jobs growth. It would be worth debating the tradeoffs if we were sitting at 10%+ unemployment with no path for improvement, but if anything, it is the job market starved for labor, not the other way around.
Scale that up by a factor of millions across the country, and you've closed the income gap. That's the power of inflation.
The thing to keep in mind is that what really matters is stuff : The goods and services that add economic value to our lives, like shoes, houses, food, sports games, accounting services, haircuts, etc. Also called the metaphorical "pie." Inflation is bad to the extent that it causes the total stuff we produce to go down or to become more poorly distributed, and good to the extent that it does the opposite. And a shri…
That's precisely what happened to me. I'm taking some attention away from my business venture to protect my wealth from evaporating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anything it increases inequality. It hurts the poor the most. The wealthy are more immune because they will have their wealth in things that go up with inflation. When it is caused by the government spending more than it takes in, it is effectively a hidden tax. NONE of these things are new concepts. Even the belief that the inflation won't hurt is new. Many other societies have blindly thought they were immune un…
When you say the wealthy are immune because their wealth is in things that go up with inflation, what exactly are you thinking about? Not stocks for sure. Maybe those who have money invested in property for hire, but even then whether your income goes up with inflation strongly depends on where you are location. Interesting to know: in some countries (eg. Belgium) wages are automatically adapted to inflation, so "the…
Only certain wages. Like public servant wages. Private companies paying normal people regular wages aren't forced to give them a raise. The minimal wage may inflate but if you're paid above minimal wage, there's no guarantee you'll see a raise.