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Wow, this simple comment completely changed my point of view on this argument. What a beautiful, almost laconically effective analogy. edit: not being sarcasti

Wow, this simple comment completely changed my point of view on this argument. What a beautiful, almost laconically effective analogy. edit: not being sarcastic, I just really admire effective communication (to whoever downvoted me </3)

ALittleLight 6y ago
I don't think it should have. Height is objective. I don't get taller or shorter based on other people's heights. Money isn't like that. If the amount of money in a system increases without a commensurate increase in the amount of goods and services, that could be decrease my purchasing power. Another way of phrasing it: child 1 used to be the tallest. The other children grew and now 1 is the shortest. The objective height of 1 may have increased, but relative stature declined. The figure to think about is purchasing power. How much stuff can you buy with your money, whatever the numerical quantity of that money is. Purchasing power has been roughly flat for the past 40 years for the middle class [1]. The economy is growing, but almost all of that growth is captured by the upper class. Things that the middle class mostly spend their money on, healthcare, education, housing - has all been getting disproportionately more expensive too. So it's not just that the effective earnings aren't increasing, it's also that the things middle class families spend on are getting more expensive. It's complicated to think about, but that's partly why you shouldn't trust pithy analogies that try to make stagnant income for the middle class seem acceptable. As the saying goes - for every hard problem there's an answer that's simple, elegant, and wrong. "Everyone is getting richer, just at different rates, like your children grow at different rates" is one such answer. In reality, your upper class child is gigantic, fat, and eating more while the other children haven't developed in years. 1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
- seisvelas 6y ago
  >middle class families This seems like a propaganda term to endow the more aptly named 'working class' with a more prestigious title. In any case, the point holds: your argument about inflation is so clear precisely because you can explain it against the backdrop of the height analogy. It is a really neat way to explain the situation, even if it mostly explains why OP is wrong.
igravious 6y ago
What a dollar (or euro, or any currency) is worth changes over time relative to other currencies which is how we can get currency trading, correct? Not only that but a currency changes relative to itself over time. This is the purchasing power of the currency over time. Here is a calculator for that: https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/ https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/ and here: https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation This gets called inflation. (People do argue about what inflation is and what they argue for depends on their economic ideology – there's the inflation of prices in a currency and the inflation of a currency itself through pumping more of it into the system, so-called quantitative easing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation Put simple, height is measured using a fixed or absolute measure (inches or centimetres or whatever) – a $ in 1970 is not the same $ in 2020, it's relative – but we know this intuitively anyway because when we look at old prices (for most things) they are way less.

ALittleLight 6y ago

I don't think it should have. Height is objective. I don't get taller or shorter based on other people's heights. Money isn't like that. If the amount of money in a system increases without a commensurate increase in the amount of goods and services, that could be decrease my purchasing power. Another way of phrasing it: child 1 used to be the tallest. The other children grew and now 1 is the shortest. The objective height of 1 may have increased, but relative stature declined. The figure to think about is purchasing power. How much stuff can you buy with your money, whatever the numerical quantity of that money is. Purchasing power has been roughly flat for the past 40 years for the middle class [1]. The economy is growing, but almost all of that growth is captured by the upper class. Things that the middle class mostly spend their money on, healthcare, education, housing - has all been getting disproportionately more expensive too. So it's not just that the effective earnings aren't increasing, it's also that the things middle class families spend on are getting more expensive. It's complicated to think about, but that's partly why you shouldn't trust pithy analogies that try to make stagnant income for the middle class seem acceptable. As the saying goes - for every hard problem there's an answer that's simple, elegant, and wrong. "Everyone is getting richer, just at different rates, like your children grow at different rates" is one such answer. In reality, your upper class child is gigantic, fat, and eating more while the other children haven't developed in years. 1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

seisvelas 6y ago
>middle class families This seems like a propaganda term to endow the more aptly named 'working class' with a more prestigious title. In any case, the point holds: your argument about inflation is so clear precisely because you can explain it against the backdrop of the height analogy. It is a really neat way to explain the situation, even if it mostly explains why OP is wrong.

igravious 6y ago

What a dollar (or euro, or any currency) is worth changes over time relative to other currencies which is how we can get currency trading, correct? Not only that but a currency changes relative to itself over time. This is the purchasing power of the currency over time. Here is a calculator for that: https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/ https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/ and here: https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation This gets called inflation. (People do argue about what inflation is and what they argue for depends on their economic ideology – there's the inflation of prices in a currency and the inflation of a currency itself through pumping more of it into the system, so-called quantitative easing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation Put simple, height is measured using a fixed or absolute measure (inches or centimetres or whatever) – a $ in 1970 is not the same $ in 2020, it's relative – but we know this intuitively anyway because when we look at old prices (for most things) they are way less.