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How come we experience so much more inflation than deflation? in other words, why does our buying power decrease far more often than it increases?
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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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.)
There are a ton of issues with our economic system, and there are a ton of structures in place to funnel money up, but keeping a moderate inflation is not one of those things.
Inflation is a specific counter-measure against people who already have a ton of money. It provides a reason for them not to just "take their ball and go home" once they have a pile of money.
To shelter their money from inflation, they need to either risk it on the open market, allowing that capital to do things like pay worker salaries, or buy things like GICs which are essentially loaning money to the government so the government can do things like build roads or fund social programs.
In either/all cases, inflation is designed to do the exact opposite of funnel money upwards, it's a mechanic to wrench that money out of the hands of the wealthy.
I feel like this story is essentially propaganda at this point- at least in the USA where the 'risk' for the rich never plays out.
The rich don't actually risk their money. They risk the government's money and other's lives and livelihoods. When they fail, they get bailed. Bailed out by the banks. Or they simply don't pay their bills and lay off all their employees and let everyone else take a bath.
Rather than inflating everything, why don't we tax the shit out of their held wealth? Seems more direct without all the side effects of making FOOD, HOUSING, AND HEALTHCARE UNAFFORDABLE
There isn't anything wrong with the mechanic of inflation as a means to encourage money to be reinvested into the economy.
You're right about cost of living not keeping up with wages. You're right about fucked up taxes on the ultra wealthy. You're right about a massive erosion of social services. you're right that the USA healthcare system is fucked up.
These are all issues that are distinct from the plan of maintaining a moderate (2%) inflation rate.
Yes, we SHOULD get living wages, unions and legislation should do that. The top tax bracket SHOULD be taxed at 70% that's tax policy. We SHOULD reinvest in social services that's government poicy. You SHOULD get universal healthcare, that's a government program. Inflation isn't the thing keeping you from any of these things.
Yes, and the people at the top do keep their money in circulation, and as a result their wealth stays constant across inflation while workers’ wages and savings go down.
I have no idea why you don’t see that as a transfer of wealth.
You say it incentivizes the rich to not hoard cash. Well, they don’t. In fact, it incentivizes everyone to not hoard cash, but the rich are the only ones with sufficient cash to trade that cash for income-generating assets.
It incentivizes everyone by punishing everyone for holding cash, but only the upper class is able to evade that punishment by converting their wealth. Poor people don’t have though cash to transform it into wealth. Their cash is only useful to them as cash.
This is why the poor are feeling the inflation the worst. People who own no stock are the ones hit hardest when the government printed a bunch of money and injected it into the stock market.
What you describe would be worse without inflation. The rich would still have most of the capital, but they also wouldn't bother investing it either, which at least recirculates the money and becomes income for others.
If that's the reason for it it's not doing its job. Investments are much like savings to high net worth individuals and their investments are managed by someone else and they simply lay in the cut and collect dividends. Yes there is a risk to investments but if you're in a good wealth fund then over time you're almost guaranteed to win even if you have disastrous months here and there.
If they're invested in businesses, the capital gets recirculated in the economy and becomes someone else's income.
Or just buy gold and bitcoin and other things that aren't tied to the value of the dollar.
This is exactly how inflation is a tax on the poor: there are ways to counteract inflation, which only become available at a certain level of wealth.
Basically disposable income is safe because you can convert it; and non-disposable income is not safe because you can’t convert it.
yup, that's exactly how it is, idk why ppl downvote me but upvote you, it's saying the same thing lol, crypto bad i guess.
You have a point but how much cash are we talking about? If you have $10k-$20k sitting around in a chequing account that's only $200-$400 you are losing to inflation. Things like the earned income tax credit would give you back like $500-$8000. They may not seem super related but in general it's easier to compensate those lower income folks for inflation than trying to change the inflation target.
Gold is a shiny bauble material, but never grows. It can be a good investment for that part that you want to put aside and will just sit. Bitcoin is invaluable for money laundering, but very unstable for saving/investing. Look at how many have been fleeced when someone gets their keys, or lost their coins by a hard drive failure. It is costly in electrical use to mine.
There are far better things not tied to the value of a dollar. I would suggest very low-fee indexed mutual funds as one better alternative. They offer an accessible way for people to get a share of the means of production. My experience is that for people who can can learn to not be ruled by fear or greed can, over time, build enough wealth to live better lives.
Which are these far better things not tied to the value of a dollar?
Investing in a company puts your money in a non-inflationary asset. If inflation goes up, your land, machinery, buildings, raw materials as well as finished product just jumped in numbers of dollars of value, thus holding its real value. The same can be said of any hard asset, and dollars could also be switched with any country's currency. I like large index funds because they are largely diverse. There are big swings, but I have gotten 9-12% average, over long periods of time.
Inflation is similar to a stock split. If you can understand stock splits, you have a rudimentary understanding of inflation.
Here is some extra information that may be too much info: Add in population growth, and realize how money supply has to at least increase to keep pace, for every worker to maintain the same pay. (in theory) Some nation's citizens like the relative stability of the dollar's value, and trade or have savings hedged with dollars. These dollars essentially drops out of money supply. Their trade velocity drops for these dollars. There are so many variables, that economists look at inflation measures to see how they are doing. These indicators are always 6 months or so behind, so they are always flying by only being able to look behind their plane.
Well, yes but no. The typical worker (sadly) has zero real savings and ideally their union manages to get at least an inflation adjusted raise each year. So those people are actually not effected by inflation at all.
It's mostly a tax on upper middle class savings and a way to sneakily decrease wages if there is no strong labour representation preventing it.
Which union secured their members a 10% wage increase in the past year?
The poor are the most affected by inflation. Just because their spending pattern doesn’t shift doesn’t meant they aren’t affected. The shift in spending patterns is a way to avoid the effects of inflation. A person whose income cannot be diverted is the most effected.
It’s like a plane is crashing and one person ejects while the other person doesn’t. Yes getting ejected from a plane’s cockpit is a high energy event. But crashing in the plane is an even higher-energy event.
The people who you are saying are “most affected” by inflation are experiencing those effects in the activation of anti-inflation mechanisms in their life. Those anti-inflation mechanisms while they do represent an effect are not as big as the effects felt by those without access to those mechanisms.
Some managed to do so, but 10% inflation is exceptional anyways.
Otherwise I don't agree. Obviously the poor are effected "the most" by any adverse economic effect due to their low coping capacity / economic buffer. But that they are especially affected by inflation is not universally true.
You need to drill down a bit further what inflation actually entails. The common "basket" used for calculating "the" inflation is far from perfect and depending on your consumption pattern you might hardly see any inflation in your personal expenses if it is mainly driven by an increase in energy costs as was the case in Europe during the last year.
Classic inflation aka devaluation of money only effects those that have money (savings). Of course if you have an increase in certain prices due to some external shock this can have a much broader effect, but it is actually wrong to call that "inflation".
So what should I call it when my food budget balloons, because the grocery stores are calling it inflation?
Most likely "greedflation" 😅
This model you’re putting forward seems to imply that when energy costs increase, it isn’t really felt by the poor.
Here in Colorado, lots of food has doubled in price. That’s big for poor people.
What I’m asking is: is the food not a major component of inflation in Europe as well. And if it is, do you not see that as connected to energy prices?
You need to improve your reading comprehension. I never said any of these things.
Obviously energy prices can have an impact on food prices, in fact they do a lot with conventional agricultures dependence on fertilizers made from natural gas.
While we’re discussing reading comprehension, I actually made an argument as to why the poor are especially, universally, affected more by inflation.
You can’t just counter the conclusion without countering the argument. How is what I described not something that’s always operating anywhere inflation is happening?
Because you failed to understand my argument. I did address your concern above.
Your argument is that because poor people don’t have savings, they don’t get affected by inflation.
No, my argument is that people with savings are effected more by inflation specifically, but of course due to low coping capacity poor people are more effected by any negative economic situation. However if you have no savings, but a relatively stable inflation adjusted income, then inflation does not effect you much.
A little bit of inflation is a fuel for economic activity. If money doesn’t lose value people have less incentive to put it to work; if it gains value(deflation) people have all the incentive to hoard money.
Currency has no inherent value, it’s purpose is to facilitate trades(economic activity). Products and services are the real value in an economy.
That being said inflation is a real tax and disproportionately hurts the poor.
Inflation happens when rich people find out you've got more money and rush to fuck you out of that too.
That's why any kind of tax break, stimulus or welfare is met with "but inflation!"
Experts in pseudoscience may claim "it encourages people not to horde wealth!" but it's just another lie that makes rich people richer when it fails to deliver for the 1000th time.
I've been taught that inflation deincentivizes hoarding wealth too, but seeing how wealth is still hoarded, I'm not convinced it's an effective tool.
That's the difference, they hoard wealth and not currency. The value of assets do not go down when currency loses its value with inflation.
Wealthy have little to no cash that would lose value with inflation, they just buy everything on credit and have their wealth tied to assets and investments that probably gain value at least at the pace of inflation.
It's still true that a deflationary economy would be a mess though. If we had deflation, the rich wouldn't even bother investing and would literally just sit on a pile of gold like Smaug. I know trickle-down doesn't work but an economy where nothing circulates would be hellish.
Wealth is hoarded; cash is not.
Less provocatively, economic growth "increases the size of the pie" but each individual piece makes up less of it. And those who can save, gathering up more pieces of the pie for themselves, can see gains from economic growth that those who can't save won't.