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The price of labor. Their goal is to suppress wages. Gotta put workers back in their place or the whole system collapses.

just_steve_h 4y ago
Which is also why there's bipartisan consensus on giving lots more money to police and the military. After all, someone has to control the violent rabble as they are priced out of decent living!
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  The wealthy can afford private security. Crime mostly hurts less fortunate people and has had a significant jump: https://abcnews.go.com/US/12-major-us-cities-top-annual-homicide-records/story?id=81466453 https://abcnews.go.com/US/12-major-us-cities-top-annual-homi... In terms of military spending, you may have heard of an illegal invasion and war happening in Eastern Europe...
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
Broadly speaking, if complaints oscillate between the central bank punishing savers one year and workers the other, that bank is doing something right.
vorpalhex 4y ago
Inflation hurts labor, not the wealthy. Bill Gates doesn't care if his groceries are 10% more expensive. Inflation is outpacing wage increases so effective wages are actually lower in terms of buying power. Housing is getting more expensive at a faster rate than wages are increasing. If you are pro-labor you want the fed to aggressively raise rates because that makes life harder for business.
- colinsane 4y ago
  > If you are pro-labor you want the fed to aggressively raise rates because that makes life harder for business. the fed presents its goals as balancing low unemployment against low inflation. any projections for unemployment have it increasing as the fed tightens. i haven’t seen anyone say who these newly unemployed are, nor where they end up. but if the tradeoff were “low unemployment, but those at the bottom of the wrung have to move to cheaper housing (and commute further, etc)” vs “higher unemployment: those at the bottom of the wrung are SOL and end up on the streets”… well, i certainly hope that’s not the tradeoff we’re actively choosing here.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- erellsworth 4y ago
  Yes, inflation hurts workers. You know what also hurts workers? Low wages. The fed has specifically stated that reducing wages is one of their goals. I'm not against the fed raising rates. But any benefit workers see from such a policy is unintentional.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    > The fed has specifically stated that reducing wages is one of their goals. Citation? I would be surprised for the fed to have such a thing as their goal.
    - erellsworth 4y ago
      "Wages are running high, the highest they’ve run in quite some time. And they are one good example of—or good illustration, really—of how tight the labor market really is, the fact that wages are running at the highest level in many decades. And that’s because of an imbalance between supply and demand and the labor market. So we think, through our policies, through further healing in the labor market, higher rates, for example, of vacancy filling and things like that, and more people coming back in, we like to think that supply and demand will come back into balance and that, therefore, wage inflation will moderate to still high levels of wage increases, but ones that are more consistent with 2 percent inflation. That’s our expectation." "So in principle, it seems as though, by moderating demand, we could see vacancies come down, and as a result—and they could come down fairly significantly and I think put supply and demand at least closer together than they are, and that that would give us a chance to have lower—to get inflation—to get wages down and then get inflation down without having to slow the economy and have a recession and have unemployment rise materially." Implicit in all this is the idea that wages are currently too high, and need to be suppressed. https://www.wsj.com/articles/transcript-fed-chief-powells-postmeeting-press-conference-11651696613 https://www.wsj.com/articles/transcript-fed-chief-powells-po...
tdhz77 4y ago
Yes, Space X.
jason-phillips 4y ago
I see what you're saying, but taking that logically a few steps further, I see this round of inflation is simply a rebalancing of prices relative to finite supply at the hands of a more empowered worker class. But I think you're right too.
adrr 4y ago
There is a labor shortage not caused by covid but due to significant portion of the population retiring. We're missing 2 million workers from 2019. Biggest issue is that raising rates actually exacerbates the issue due to increased expense in investing in automation. From a society standpoint and an economic standpoint, people shouldn't be manually picking and packing things in a warehouse when we have automation that can drastically improve this. Businesses are to blame because labor was so cheap that they never invested in automation.

just_steve_h 4y ago

Which is also why there's bipartisan consensus on giving lots more money to police and the military. After all, someone has to control the violent rabble as they are priced out of decent living!

vorpalhex 4y ago
The wealthy can afford private security. Crime mostly hurts less fortunate people and has had a significant jump: https://abcnews.go.com/US/12-major-us-cities-top-annual-homicide-records/story?id=81466453 https://abcnews.go.com/US/12-major-us-cities-top-annual-homi... In terms of military spending, you may have heard of an illegal invasion and war happening in Eastern Europe...

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

Broadly speaking, if complaints oscillate between the central bank punishing savers one year and workers the other, that bank is doing something right.

vorpalhex 4y ago

Inflation hurts labor, not the wealthy. Bill Gates doesn't care if his groceries are 10% more expensive. Inflation is outpacing wage increases so effective wages are actually lower in terms of buying power. Housing is getting more expensive at a faster rate than wages are increasing. If you are pro-labor you want the fed to aggressively raise rates because that makes life harder for business.

colinsane 4y ago
> If you are pro-labor you want the fed to aggressively raise rates because that makes life harder for business. the fed presents its goals as balancing low unemployment against low inflation. any projections for unemployment have it increasing as the fed tightens. i haven’t seen anyone say who these newly unemployed are, nor where they end up. but if the tradeoff were “low unemployment, but those at the bottom of the wrung have to move to cheaper housing (and commute further, etc)” vs “higher unemployment: those at the bottom of the wrung are SOL and end up on the streets”… well, i certainly hope that’s not the tradeoff we’re actively choosing here.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
erellsworth 4y ago
Yes, inflation hurts workers. You know what also hurts workers? Low wages. The fed has specifically stated that reducing wages is one of their goals. I'm not against the fed raising rates. But any benefit workers see from such a policy is unintentional.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  > The fed has specifically stated that reducing wages is one of their goals. Citation? I would be surprised for the fed to have such a thing as their goal.
  - erellsworth 4y ago
    "Wages are running high, the highest they’ve run in quite some time. And they are one good example of—or good illustration, really—of how tight the labor market really is, the fact that wages are running at the highest level in many decades. And that’s because of an imbalance between supply and demand and the labor market. So we think, through our policies, through further healing in the labor market, higher rates, for example, of vacancy filling and things like that, and more people coming back in, we like to think that supply and demand will come back into balance and that, therefore, wage inflation will moderate to still high levels of wage increases, but ones that are more consistent with 2 percent inflation. That’s our expectation." "So in principle, it seems as though, by moderating demand, we could see vacancies come down, and as a result—and they could come down fairly significantly and I think put supply and demand at least closer together than they are, and that that would give us a chance to have lower—to get inflation—to get wages down and then get inflation down without having to slow the economy and have a recession and have unemployment rise materially." Implicit in all this is the idea that wages are currently too high, and need to be suppressed. https://www.wsj.com/articles/transcript-fed-chief-powells-postmeeting-press-conference-11651696613 https://www.wsj.com/articles/transcript-fed-chief-powells-po...

tdhz77 4y ago

Yes, Space X.

jason-phillips 4y ago

I see what you're saying, but taking that logically a few steps further, I see this round of inflation is simply a rebalancing of prices relative to finite supply at the hands of a more empowered worker class. But I think you're right too.

adrr 4y ago

There is a labor shortage not caused by covid but due to significant portion of the population retiring. We're missing 2 million workers from 2019. Biggest issue is that raising rates actually exacerbates the issue due to increased expense in investing in automation. From a society standpoint and an economic standpoint, people shouldn't be manually picking and packing things in a warehouse when we have automation that can drastically improve this. Businesses are to blame because labor was so cheap that they never invested in automation.