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Indeed, let's look at some remarks from some leading "thinkers" on deflation: > Deflation rewards the prudent saver and punishes the profligate borrower. The w
by lolcraft 14y ago
Indeed, let's look at some remarks from some leading "thinkers" on deflation:
> Deflation rewards the prudent saver and punishes the profligate borrower. The way a society, like an individual, becomes wealthy is by producing more than it consumes. - Doug Casey
Moralistic pseudo-economical bullshit. Want to know some scandalous borrowers' names? Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Warren Buffet, I could go on. The last sentence is so wrong it hurts; a pro-capitalist economist should know very well that, in a market economy, production equals consumption. Shame on him.
> Deflation puts a break–at the very least a temporary break–on the further concentration and consolidation of power in the hands of the federal government and in particular in the executive branch. It dampens the growth of the welfare state, if it does not lead to its outright implosion. - Jörg Guido Hülsmann
Holy fucking shit Batman, you just did not make the case for deflation based on your pet political fringe worldview. For the record: one, the "executive branch" is not a monolithic entity, and the central bank is quite independent from say, the president; two, what you call "nanny state" is my "minimum decency and human rights state", so thanks for the monetary coup d'etát; three, what about constant, steep deflation favouring by nature the concentration of power into a oligopoly of capitalists. But I guess, since it's a oligopoly of capitalists, it's all OK.
> George Selgin rightly distinguishes between malign demand-driven deflation which is an unfortunate secondary effect of a central bank-manipulated, inflationary malinvestment phase and benign deflation which is the result of an increase in productivity.
Yeah, dude should also talk about malign deflation that's designed into your currency. Nothing to do with increased productivity, incidentally. One wonders whom these leading thinkers lead, and where...
Really, I'm most sympathetic with the notion that lowering prices will increase demand. True, however, we're interested here in the matter of lending and borrowing, which is, in my opinion, very worrying. Of course, I'm not an economist, so I might very well be wrong. However, these gentlemens' arguments do nothing to persuade me.