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> The definition was changed only because economists decided inflating the money supply was a brilliant economic policy and the old definition became inconvenie
by roenxi 2y ago
> The definition was changed only because economists decided inflating the money supply was a brilliant economic policy and the old definition became inconvenient.
That probably isn't true, both because it isn't that obvious that the economists thought it was a good idea or that they were the ones who changed the definition. "Economists" don't have any power over anything and the consensus position seems to tend towards disagreement with government policy.
Inflation is one of those topics where there seems to be a dearth of actual economic evidence bought to the conversation. The policy justification in the public discourse tends towards just-so stories.
- _heimdall 2y agohttps://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentary/1997/ec-19971015-on-the-origin-and-evolution-of-the-word-inflation https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentar... This is a good overview of the history of the term "inflation." Ideally people would specify which inflation they're referring to, like monetary Inflation or price inflation. Short of that though, until we started moving to full fiat currencies inflation without any qualifier was inflation of the money supply. After the move to fiat they repurposed the braod term to mean price inflation, presumably because monetary inflation isn't meaningful when your system is based entirely on manipulating the money supply.