471
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
471 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
42521 readers
854 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
This is because inflation isn't a bug it's a feature.
Anything that transfers wealth up the chain, from working class to middle class and from middle class to upper class, is a feature of the western economic system.
For example, in England and Wales the Bank of England is charged with keeping inflation at a target of around two per cent. This means that the pound in a workers pocket is supposed to devalue. The advantage is that the government borrows money in its own currency so inflation means that its debt goes down (in real terms) when inflation goes up.
In other words, it’s similar to a tax in that the money you earn today, by the time you spend it, is worth less by design.
Inflation does has have a positive feature of encouraging investment and spending, rather than hoarding under a mattress. The money is put back into the economy because every day it isn’t, it loses value. If money were getting more valuable over time (called “deflation”), you’re incentivized to treat it like an asset—not a currency—and hold onto it as long as you can (like Bitcoin), rather than reinvest or spend.
Yes, this is true but you also have to factor in the marginal propensity to consume, or in plain English, the poorer you are the more of your income you have to spend on necessities like rent or groceries.
There are always high interest investments available to people with a large amounts of spare cash floating about even when inflation is low.
If your rent + utilities + food = your income then you ain't hoarding money even in a deflationary spiral.
No, but you are more likely to get fired and lose your income as demand for labor drops.
Always. If inflation runs away, the poor suffer. If we get stuck in a deflationary cycle the poor suffer. Apparently it is impossible to construct an equitable system that works without gross inequality (spoiler: it isn't but some people love inequality and will do anything to prevent things being distributed more equally.)