4 ms·

Not the OP, but I'll chime in. In the context of inflation, the standard party line theses are like this. Right wing: inflation is caused by huge Government sp

Not the OP, but I'll chime in. In the context of inflation, the standard party line theses are like this. Right wing: inflation is caused by huge Government spending. Left wing: inflation is caused by a range of factors, and Government spending is just a minor one. The other ones are the supply chain, the emergence of the economy from a crisis, a spike in commodity prices, especially oil, some of which could be attributed to the hurricane Ida that resulted in lots of refineries being shut down, etc. About a month ago another idea was added to this list: inflation is caused by corporate greed. The problem with this idea is that corporate greed is not new. If corporate greed could cause inflation, it would have caused inflation 5 years ago, or 10, or whatever. The proponents of this idea claim that it's the market consolidation that lead to increased pricing power for the corporations, and there's some truth to this, but again, this consolidation did not experience any quantum leap recently. I think on this topic, the Right wing is absolutely right, the inflation is without a doubt caused by the massive, unprecedented money printing. What they forget is that this money printing started during the previous administration, so there's that.

julianapostate 5y ago
the reason for which trump started it are totally different than the reasons for which democrats want to continue it.
- geraldyo 5y ago
  Can you explain how?
  - julianapostate 5y ago
    trump started printing money during an unprecedanted employment and business crisis, airlines and much critical business would have likely collapsed in months without that intervention. then trump wanted to do it again probably just to get reelected or something dumb but at that point the mid-point of republic thought was not really eager for more stimulus. and now at this point the economy is fully humming along and there is no employment or business crisis, business actually have more work than they can hire for and yet democrats still want stimulus. so i can only conclude that any stimulus is ostensibly for "crisis" but really its just form of wealth redistribution since stimulus checks go not to the non-rich but will end up being paid for by the rich. so for democrat stimulus is now a form of policy implementation by a precedented and popular mechanism.
mox1 5y ago
So money printing != government spending.... I think of government spending as all of the money needed to fund / run the federal government. While the Fed is printing money and spending that to purchase assets..I wouldn't really put that into the same bucket as Medicare or Military spending..
daniel-cussen 5y ago
If only it were still money printing. Those were the good old days, printing money looks like the gold standard compared to what's going on today. Now it's just account *= 10;
quantified 5y ago
The classic argument against monopolies or oligopolies is “predatory pricing”. If the things being priced are components of an inflation index, how does this not contribute to inflation?
- quantified 5y ago
  Must be a sensitive post and thread when that basic a question gets downvoted…
wahern 5y ago
> If corporate greed could cause inflation, it would have caused inflation 5 years ago, or 10, or whatever. The same could be said of government or central bank spending, but the past 15 years in the U.S. and the past 30 years in Japan show that the relationship isn't quite so simple. Yet few people deny that government spending can induce consumer price inflation, so why conclude from effectively the exact same longitudinal data set that corporate pricing power cannot induce consumer price inflation? In both cases the devil is clearly in the details. If macroeconomics were a solved problem we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
throwawaymanbot 5y ago

julianapostate 5y ago

the reason for which trump started it are totally different than the reasons for which democrats want to continue it.

geraldyo 5y ago
Can you explain how?
- julianapostate 5y ago
  trump started printing money during an unprecedanted employment and business crisis, airlines and much critical business would have likely collapsed in months without that intervention. then trump wanted to do it again probably just to get reelected or something dumb but at that point the mid-point of republic thought was not really eager for more stimulus. and now at this point the economy is fully humming along and there is no employment or business crisis, business actually have more work than they can hire for and yet democrats still want stimulus. so i can only conclude that any stimulus is ostensibly for "crisis" but really its just form of wealth redistribution since stimulus checks go not to the non-rich but will end up being paid for by the rich. so for democrat stimulus is now a form of policy implementation by a precedented and popular mechanism.

mox1 5y ago

So money printing != government spending.... I think of government spending as all of the money needed to fund / run the federal government. While the Fed is printing money and spending that to purchase assets..I wouldn't really put that into the same bucket as Medicare or Military spending..

daniel-cussen 5y ago

If only it were still money printing. Those were the good old days, printing money looks like the gold standard compared to what's going on today. Now it's just account *= 10;

quantified 5y ago

The classic argument against monopolies or oligopolies is “predatory pricing”. If the things being priced are components of an inflation index, how does this not contribute to inflation?

quantified 5y ago
Must be a sensitive post and thread when that basic a question gets downvoted…

wahern 5y ago

> If corporate greed could cause inflation, it would have caused inflation 5 years ago, or 10, or whatever. The same could be said of government or central bank spending, but the past 15 years in the U.S. and the past 30 years in Japan show that the relationship isn't quite so simple. Yet few people deny that government spending can induce consumer price inflation, so why conclude from effectively the exact same longitudinal data set that corporate pricing power cannot induce consumer price inflation? In both cases the devil is clearly in the details. If macroeconomics were a solved problem we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago