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As a brazilian, history teaches that inflation is a pain in the ass. I lived in hyperinflation when I was a kid. I rememore that my parents would receive and r
by major505 4y ago
As a brazilian, history teaches that inflation is a pain in the ass.
I lived in hyperinflation when I was a kid.
I rememore that my parents would receive and run to the market in the same day, and buy everything in bulk, because next day, their money would be worth half.
Markets would tag products once or twice a day.
I remember buying an X-men comic that was worth something like 1000 BRC.
Monthly inflation would be beetween 50% - 80%.
Also a lot of the commerce was informal and using barter.
- bruce511 4y agoIt's something of a pity that hyper-inflation, and inflation, share more-or-less the same name. Hyper-inflation is bad, and ultimately makes local-money such a poor store of value as to make it useless. People will revert to non-money approaches to trade, or use a different currency for money. So yeah hyper-inflation is really bad, and (I suspect) what most Americans think of when the word "inflation" is used. By contrast regular inflation, say in the 3% to 6% band has significant upsides. It promotes exports, leverages borrowings, and so on. Equally it devalues income for those on a fixed-value pension (probably an excellent lesson to current generations of the value of inflation-linked investments and income) and that sucks. The solution though is not 0% inflation for ever, the solution is better pension plans. Yes, inflation is "high" at the moment, but it's several orders of magnitude away from hyper-inflation. And the counter to inflation, higher interest rates, is starting to happen.
- major505 4y agoInlflation is bad. Specially because is a "tax" that affects the poorest population, that this days the origin is not rare, because the state prints money like crazy, to achieve its goals in the short term.