4 ms·

What you did is point out a few real problems in our current economic reality of which inflation is one part. In no way does this say anything about how deflat

What you did is point out a few real problems in our current economic reality of which inflation is one part. In no way does this say anything about how deflation solves any of them, or even leads to worse scenarios.. Think about the issues you mentioned - wage stagnation, unsustainable expectation of growth in corporate profits, systemic inequality etc. - Now ask yourself "how will removing monetary inflation and replacing it with monetary deflation affect these systemic issues, in which direction will it drive them, how and why?" If you still come out on the pro-deflation side, I'd be happy to hear your perspective.

dnautics 9y ago
real wage stagnation is a social policy, not an emergent phenomenon. Politicians are concerned about unemployment numbers, and there is this bogeyman that "sticky wages" of lower classes gets in the way. The prescribed way around this is to decrease the real value of money and incrementally dislodge the liability of employing lower classes. Systemic inequality is generated, by deliberate inflationary policy[0], it is not a "universal constant of the universe". https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-inflation/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... "Even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis." [0] I do, for what it's worth, think that liberal economists aren't acting in bad faith, they're just clueless, mostly because if you're a liberal economist (or almost any economist, really) you've probably never been poor.

4 ms·

What you did is point out a few real problems in our current economic reality of which inflation is one part. In no way does this say anything about how deflat

by ultraluminous 9y ago

dnautics 9y ago
real wage stagnation is a social policy, not an emergent phenomenon. Politicians are concerned about unemployment numbers, and there is this bogeyman that "sticky wages" of lower classes gets in the way. The prescribed way around this is to decrease the real value of money and incrementally dislodge the liability of employing lower classes. Systemic inequality is generated, by deliberate inflationary policy[0], it is not a "universal constant of the universe". https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-inflation/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... "Even in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis." [0] I do, for what it's worth, think that liberal economists aren't acting in bad faith, they're just clueless, mostly because if you're a liberal economist (or almost any economist, really) you've probably never been poor.