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by sethg 5506 days ago
Inflation is not a tax.

Furthermore, a rise in the dollar-denominated price of gold is not inflation; inflation is a rise in the nominal price of things we actually buy.

1 comments

Inflation is one of the worst taxes of all because the government can hide how much of the value of the dollar they take from us!

Further, inflation is an increase in the money supply (ie printing new money). It is NOT an increase in price of goods, although it usually causes price increases as producers and consumers react.

“The value of the dollar” is a meaningless term. A dollar only has value relative to something else. And in that sense, if I want to know what the value of a dollar is, I just look at what I can buy with it. (I suppose if the government were regulating wages and prices this technique wouldn’t work, but the last President to try such a thing was that famous socialist, Richard M. Nixon.)

Virtually every document that I have seen talking about “inflation”, in the economic sense, defines it as “prices going up”. You can define it as “an increase in the money supply” if that makes you happy. And I could define it as “mint-chocolate-chip ice cream”. Hey, I wish I had some more inflation....