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Universal prosperity just raises the prices across the board until some folks are "poor" again.

• randallsquared 18y ago
  That's inflation. Actual prosperity raises the metric of "poor", instead. Today's poor in the US can all afford cars and big screen TVs (to a first approximation), but that doesn't mean they're not poor in comparison to others in the US.
  • bonaldi 18y ago
    It isn't inflation, though I think we agree -- what I'm saying is that universal prosperity is an unattainable notion: price inflation would necessarily follow any universal prosperity, until there once again was differential prosperity. Rich/Poor is always relative.
    • randallsquared 18y ago
      I'm not sure we do agree. :) I would say that there is a difference between an increase in the amount of money for the same actual wealth, and an increase in the wealth itself. One is inflation, and the other is growth. Growth can mean that everyone is rich by the standards of previous times in terms of how much of everything they can afford, which could be reflected in the prices for everything dropping. Universal prosperity in computing hardware, for example, has resulted in exactly the opposite of the price inflation you seem to expect.