[ekianjo]

> f people want to exchange more, they need more coupons.

thats a fallacy. nothing prevents you from exchanging more even if you had a fixed number of coupons. you would just have to consider that the value of each coupon becomes more, not less, over time, so you need to use subdivisions of coupons more.

Inflation, even at low levels, is ultimately value destruction over time.

[klipt]

> the value of each coupon becomes more, not less, over time

Deflation has historically been a bad thing every time it's happened.

[ibeckermayer]

Nonsense. Sure, deflationary shocks can be calamitous, like the Great Depression or the GFC. But steady deflation over time is logically the natural and good outcome of improvement over time—as technology advances and we get better at producing things, they should get cheaper, on average.

Instead, our savings are buying us LESS over time, so that government can buy votes, fund wars, bail out defense contractors, pharma companies, financial institutions, and other cronies, etc. Inflation via the printing press, which is now just considered by many a normal phenomenon, is actually legalized wealth transfer from the savings of ordinary citizens into the coffers of giant government bureaucracies and the large corporations that feed off them.

[simonh]

Devaluing in-the-mattress savings is a good thing, hence all the many government schemes to incentivise small scale productive investment. Here in the UK that's through tax free consumer savings accounts like ISAs, but also pensions. Savings that are invested do work in the economy fund businesses, promote economic activity and aid job and wealth creation. Stuffed mattresses are a boat anchor on the economy.

Having said that, deflation isn't always the awful spectre of doom it's sometimes made out do be, especially if it's due to technological improvements or increased supply. As the article we're all notionally discussing explains, inflation in a reasonably well managed economy is generally differential and reflects shifts in the structure of the economy.

[nagasadhu]

That's basically saying u can't hold on to ur hard earned money after paying taxes. Give it to the government or some pension firm. And depend on the government and incompetent regulators to take care of you in your old age.

[dinom]

What is "in-the-mattress" savings exactly... besides one person's savings that another wants to spend differently?

Who should be the ultimate judge of how capital is saved and invested? You? The government? What about the person who actually did the saving?

Taken to it's logical conclusion, saying that "devaluing in-the-mattress savings is a good thing" sounds a lot like "let's soak the rich" to me.... and it's a very slippery road to serfdom.

[simonh]

In-the-matress savings are money that is not invested, such as cash stuffed in a matress.

This is the opposite of soaking the rich. The well-off generally have a very large proportion of their wealth invested in productive economic activities, with returns well above inflation.

[dinom]

You haven't convinced me. After all... what about short-term bills? Are they considered savings or investment? What about FX accounts? What about operating capital? In other words... what is "not invested"? An axiomatic definition is imperative... not turtles all the way down.

Savings and investment are largely synonymous so I stand by my initial statement. How can one expect to buy a house if they're precluded from putting savings "in-the-mattress"? I'm not suggesting they'd be better or worse off using leverage... I'm saying it is solely for them to determine since they're the ones who are most familiar with their own circumstances.

If someone enjoys wiping their rear with $100 bills that's up to them.

As I can tell, the best definition for "in-the-mattress savings" is capital that is deemed a bad investment by any/every one except the person who managed to create the savings itself.

Your argument leads to a slippery slope... what would stop me from taking your assets because they don't fit my definition of "investment"?

[sokoloff]

That is true but also feels somewhat circular. “The set of people who are prone to make optimal choices with their money is correlated with the set of the people who have more money today.”

It’s not clear the direction of the causal link and it’s almost surely a bit of both. Having more money affords the luxury of making (and time to research or money to outsource) better decisions. Making better decisions leads to having more money.

If the predominant economic paradigm were one that favored in-mattress-saving (such as persistent deflation might be), would the “rich” still be as inclined to invest in today’s productive-given-inflation assets or would they pivot to being heavy in-mattress savers? The ones that didn’t adjust would presumably become relatively less rich over time.

[merpnderp]

The value of a worker 50 years ago is surely far less to me today than it was to his employers back then. Yet if we had deflation his work would be worth more today than back then. Why should I value a road builder’s work today when that road has been tore up 10x over since then?

[dinom]

Lol, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31539114

you say "I don’t want to devalue their savings" yet above you say

"Devaluing in-the-mattress savings is a good thing".

Either your thinking has changed or, you're trying to cause confusion or, maybe confused yourself, or are trolling. At this point I suspect I may even be chatting with an ELIZA... so what else is there for me to say? Think whatever you want.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[mrow84]

Goods getting cheaper broadly means that supply is going up relative to demand - we call this deflation.

If the supply of money goes up relative to demand then we call that inflation.

It seems like you are conflating the two categories.

[someguydave]

Yeah that decreasing price for silicon chips over the past decades has been a real disaster.

[actionablefiber]

There's a difference between decreases in the price of specific goods that comes about due to technology, and deflation that comes about due to monetary policy.

That I can think of, the obvious difference is that the second one almost definitionally means a steady decrease in nominal wages. This seems like a perverse incentive - if I sock away my first paycheck flipping burgers under my mattress and do nothing with it for 50 years, a deflationary regime means I can take it back out and buy a lot more with it than someone with their first paycheck flipping burgers today.

[someguydave]

> the obvious difference is that the second one almost definitionally

People said similar stuff about negative interest rates, yet they were rolled out and kind of worked around the world. I'm not buying this defense of inflationism.

[actionablefiber]

The prevailing consensus is that interest rates and inflation are inversely correlated, so "negative interest rates worked out fine" isn't a rebuttal to that.

[ekianjo]

> if I sock away my first paycheck flipping burgers under my mattress and do nothing with it for 50 years, a deflationary regime means I can take it back out and buy a lot more with it than someone with their first paycheck flipping burgers today.

Thats still true with inflation too. No idea what your point is.

[actionablefiber]

How is that true with inflation? Under the exact same scenario but with an inflationary monetary policy, any money you sock under your mattress dwindles down to a fraction of its purchasing power over the course of many decades if it is not invested into a vehicle that generates returns. That could be equities, bonds, housing, or even an interest-bearing savings account. The point is that an inflationary regime incentivizes investments as a means of wealth preservation.

[ekianjo]

So you would have to assume that investments would be worthless in a non inflationary state which is a big stretch of the imagination. You think there were no tech revolutions and investments going on while everyone was at the gold standard?

[ekianjo]

Says every governement that promotes inflation. Funny hey?