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by ww 5396 days ago
"People still need what they need and want what they want and are going to buy those things regardless of what relative prices will be in the future."

What about "investors" instead of "consumers"? Right now an investor simply makes a choice between losing money by sitting on it (through increased supply ... printing money leads to inflation) or investing. If the money supply were fixed would that not make it more attractive to investors to sit on assets?

1 comments

Prices decrease under a stable money supply because the economy grows. Goods and services are being produced more efficiently and are therefore more plentiful relative to the same quantity of money and therefore cheaper. Growth in the value of money will simply reflect baseline growth in the value of the economy as a whole. There are still much higher returns available to investors who are willing to take greater risks--no external motivation is necessary. Monetary expansion doesn't alter this basic relationship, it just ruins the currency as a reliable store of value.