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by lesuorac 1364 days ago
> all else equal?

Reality is never all else equal.

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> Are you implying that it's impossible to draw such a conclusions from particular events such as those of 2020?

That's not my claim at all. In fact I've invited the person to link me to their article explaining their analysis of 2020 and why it would lead to inflation in 2022. My point is strictly that people always claim that X is going to cause inflation and then just wait until inflation occurs to say "Aha, X does cause inflation" while doing 0 analysis to show that it was X as opposed to literally any other reason.

1 comments

> Reality is never all else equal.

Agreed, but that's not really relevant to the discussion.

> My point is strictly that people always claim that X is going to cause inflation and then just wait until inflation occurs to say "Aha, X does cause inflation" while doing 0 analysis to show that it was X as opposed to literally any other reason.

But we are talking about the money supply. Prices are measured in units of money. You are suggesting that there is not a reason to think that changes in the size of the money supply influence price inflation. That makes no sense. Unless that additional money is just being systematically hoarded which seems unlikely in the long run.

Put another way, a mismatch between the money supply and the demand for money (for use as a medium of exchange) is essentially what price inflation is, almost by definition. So whatever the underlying "cause" of inflation, it's also always fair to say that the money supply was or became too large to keep it in check.