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> will get increased income along with inflation. By magical means of course. Inflation is a sneaky way to give the poor a wage cut. How else do you suppose

> will get increased income along with inflation. By magical means of course. Inflation is a sneaky way to give the poor a wage cut. How else do you suppose the fed is supposed to be able to increase employment using inflation? Edit: down voted, ok here is a citation from an economics Nobel laureate: 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... > 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 would lead to lower unemployment By its very nature, giving laborers inflation-matching pay raises counters the explicit, intended policy effect of using inflation to increase employment. Or, your employment model could be relying on "let's use increasing prices to light a fire under people's asses to get them to look for jobs". Which, if you ask me, as a neoliberal programme is far crueler, far more pernicious, than any slash-public-services scheme that fiscal conservatives dream up.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> By its very nature, giving laborers inflation-matching pay raises counters the explicit, intended policy effect of using inflation to increase employment. Suppose we print a bunch of new money and hand it out to everybody. Now people have money in their pockets and want to spend it, so demand goes up, so prices go up, and we get inflation. But most goods and services have elastic supply. We can make more of most things given higher demand. So companies make more of stuff and have to hire more people to do it; unemployment goes down. Hiring people is supply and demand again. Demand goes up, wages go up. Then, if you stop printing money, the demand (in real dollars) goes back to the original level once prices and wages have both increased. If you continue to do so (i.e. a constant rate of inflation), the extra demand is sustained by the continuous infusion of money. Now suppose you do the same thing, but instead of giving the new money to individuals, you give it to the rich, or to borrowers in the form of low interest rates. They use it to bid up housing prices. Then people have to work more to afford the same house or apartment, which lowers unemployment. This is obviously bad and screws the poor. The most important thing is who gets the new money. It needs to go to individuals, not borrowers, not institutions.
- dnautics 5y ago
  > The most important thing is who gets the new money. It needs to go to individuals, not borrowers, not institutions Government by its very nature must generally give out newly created money to the wealthy (handing out money to the public directly does not get low income housing built, or highways, or military bases, or warships, or scientific research... To "get shit done" you must give it to already-wealthy contractors), and by its current construction, the interest payments to create that money goes to banks. Now if you want to argue that "government maybe should not be doing a lot of that shit", perhaps you do have a concrete proposal for reducing the wealth divide.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > Government by its very nature must generally give out newly created money to the wealthy Why? Last year they sent everyone a check. They could do that.
    - dnautics 5y ago
      You're missing the point. Sure, they can do that sort of thing from time to time to make people like you happy, but the primary spending of government, as in, "to do shit", cannot be structured like that. Are you arguing that 100% of government spending should be stimulus checks?
      - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
        100% of government printing money should be.
        dnautics 5y ago
        so, just to be clear: what you are saying, is all government services, bureaucratic expenditures, military budget, FBI budget, Education, Energy, social services, social security shortfall, disaster relief, interest payments on the debt, medicare, universal health care, and so forth should come entirely from the collected tax base. Perhaps we can even be very careful about this, to avoid politicians abusing "projected revenue" by mandating all of these line-item expenses of the government in any given year cannot exceed the previous year's tax revenue? And if the government decides to exceed that figure, 100% of the overshoot must be somehow redistributed to the people, directly. I'd be down. Count me in on your reform program.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> By its very nature, giving laborers inflation-matching pay raises counters the explicit, intended policy effect of using inflation to increase employment. Suppose we print a bunch of new money and hand it out to everybody. Now people have money in their pockets and want to spend it, so demand goes up, so prices go up, and we get inflation. But most goods and services have elastic supply. We can make more of most things given higher demand. So companies make more of stuff and have to hire more people to do it; unemployment goes down. Hiring people is supply and demand again. Demand goes up, wages go up. Then, if you stop printing money, the demand (in real dollars) goes back to the original level once prices and wages have both increased. If you continue to do so (i.e. a constant rate of inflation), the extra demand is sustained by the continuous infusion of money. Now suppose you do the same thing, but instead of giving the new money to individuals, you give it to the rich, or to borrowers in the form of low interest rates. They use it to bid up housing prices. Then people have to work more to afford the same house or apartment, which lowers unemployment. This is obviously bad and screws the poor. The most important thing is who gets the new money. It needs to go to individuals, not borrowers, not institutions.

dnautics 5y ago
> The most important thing is who gets the new money. It needs to go to individuals, not borrowers, not institutions Government by its very nature must generally give out newly created money to the wealthy (handing out money to the public directly does not get low income housing built, or highways, or military bases, or warships, or scientific research... To "get shit done" you must give it to already-wealthy contractors), and by its current construction, the interest payments to create that money goes to banks. Now if you want to argue that "government maybe should not be doing a lot of that shit", perhaps you do have a concrete proposal for reducing the wealth divide.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > Government by its very nature must generally give out newly created money to the wealthy Why? Last year they sent everyone a check. They could do that.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    You're missing the point. Sure, they can do that sort of thing from time to time to make people like you happy, but the primary spending of government, as in, "to do shit", cannot be structured like that. Are you arguing that 100% of government spending should be stimulus checks?
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      100% of government printing money should be.
      - dnautics 5y ago
        so, just to be clear: what you are saying, is all government services, bureaucratic expenditures, military budget, FBI budget, Education, Energy, social services, social security shortfall, disaster relief, interest payments on the debt, medicare, universal health care, and so forth should come entirely from the collected tax base. Perhaps we can even be very careful about this, to avoid politicians abusing "projected revenue" by mandating all of these line-item expenses of the government in any given year cannot exceed the previous year's tax revenue? And if the government decides to exceed that figure, 100% of the overshoot must be somehow redistributed to the people, directly. I'd be down. Count me in on your reform program.