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I think it's much more complicated. The US government has been printing tons of money in the form of "QE" and "QE2", but with little or no inflation. I believ

I think it's much more complicated. The US government has been printing tons of money in the form of "QE" and "QE2", but with little or no inflation. I believe the reason is that all of this money has not ended up in the hands of the general public in the form of higher wages. When all of our wages collectively go up, you can bet the cost of goods will also go up, with no change in affordability since the same amount of your work in man-hours is needed to both produce and purchase the goods. I think we are long overdue for wage inflation, even with the associated cost increase of goods. The positive affect of it is to make fixed rate loans less burdensome. Why enslave ourselves to the past?

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
> The US government has been printing tons of money in the form of "QE" and "QE2", but with little or no inflation. Well, QE happened right after the crash of 2008. In that crash, something like $4 trillion evaporated, much of it in the real estate market. The Fed created something like $4 trillion with QEx. That wasn't inflationary. However, it prevented the crash from being deflationary and destroying everyone who was in debt.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> The US government has been printing tons of money in the form of "QE" and "QE2" “printing” is inaccurate, and more importantly “has been” should be “was”; the series of rounds of QE (QE1-QE3) ended in 2014. > When all of our wages collectively go up, you can bet the cost of goods will also go up, with no change in affordability since the same amount of your work in man-hours is needed to both produce and purchase the goods. This would be a tolerably reasonable argument based on the (inaccurate in both cases, but understandable) ideas that prices are entirely driven by supply-side concerns, and ultimately all costs are labor cost, in the case of a global wage increase, but domestic wage increase won't have that effect in a global market even with the inaccurate assumptions that would justify that conclusion for a global increase.
- jhallenworld 9y ago
  Well QE is still going on in that the fed still holds all of the assets it bought. Here is an article from last September saying that the fed is starting to sell (or not turn over) the assets: https://www.ft.com/content/caf45d6a-9e28-11e7-8cd4-932067fbf946 https://www.ft.com/content/caf45d6a-9e28-11e7-8cd4-932067fbf... Of course I agree with you on the global wage increase, I ignored the fact of multiple currencies. I kind of think that all prices are related to (possibly delayed) labor costs, along the lines of "how much work do I have to do to buy it?" and "I'll extract that oil for you only if you are willing to pay at least what I have to pay my employees to do it".
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Well QE is still going on in that the fed still holds all of the assets it bought If that was true, it wouldn't be QE still going on; QE is a policy to increase the effective money supply by buying assets, holding assets isn't increasing the money supply, it's just not decreasing it. But, also... > Here is an article from last September saying that the fed is starting to sell (or not turn over) the assets So, they are actually not still holding all the assets.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

> The US government has been printing tons of money in the form of "QE" and "QE2", but with little or no inflation. Well, QE happened right after the crash of 2008. In that crash, something like $4 trillion evaporated, much of it in the real estate market. The Fed created something like $4 trillion with QEx. That wasn't inflationary. However, it prevented the crash from being deflationary and destroying everyone who was in debt.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> The US government has been printing tons of money in the form of "QE" and "QE2" “printing” is inaccurate, and more importantly “has been” should be “was”; the series of rounds of QE (QE1-QE3) ended in 2014. > When all of our wages collectively go up, you can bet the cost of goods will also go up, with no change in affordability since the same amount of your work in man-hours is needed to both produce and purchase the goods. This would be a tolerably reasonable argument based on the (inaccurate in both cases, but understandable) ideas that prices are entirely driven by supply-side concerns, and ultimately all costs are labor cost, in the case of a global wage increase, but domestic wage increase won't have that effect in a global market even with the inaccurate assumptions that would justify that conclusion for a global increase.

jhallenworld 9y ago
Well QE is still going on in that the fed still holds all of the assets it bought. Here is an article from last September saying that the fed is starting to sell (or not turn over) the assets: https://www.ft.com/content/caf45d6a-9e28-11e7-8cd4-932067fbf946 https://www.ft.com/content/caf45d6a-9e28-11e7-8cd4-932067fbf... Of course I agree with you on the global wage increase, I ignored the fact of multiple currencies. I kind of think that all prices are related to (possibly delayed) labor costs, along the lines of "how much work do I have to do to buy it?" and "I'll extract that oil for you only if you are willing to pay at least what I have to pay my employees to do it".
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Well QE is still going on in that the fed still holds all of the assets it bought If that was true, it wouldn't be QE still going on; QE is a policy to increase the effective money supply by buying assets, holding assets isn't increasing the money supply, it's just not decreasing it. But, also... > Here is an article from last September saying that the fed is starting to sell (or not turn over) the assets So, they are actually not still holding all the assets.