|
|
|
|
|
|
by nostrademons
1329 days ago
|
|
|
The reason inflation is happening world-wide is because all major governments are following roughly the same policies. They all gave various forms of financial assistance to their citizens to get through the lockdowns. They also all held interest rates down, below their natural levels, to stimulate economic growth during the recovery. Except for Turkey and Russia, most of them are starting to raise rates again now that the U.S. is. There's a competitive aspect to central bank policy: if the U.S. drops rates but other countries don't, their exports become more expensive and hence relatively uncompetitive in the world market, their manufacturing sector loses jobs, and they get thrown out of office. If the U.S. raises rates but other countries don't, their currency drops in value relative to the USD, their imports become more expensive, this fuels inflation in their home country, and they get thrown out of office. Therefore there's a strong impulse to mimic U.S. monetary policy. This also makes the reaction of other countries a constraint on the actions of the Fed; they cannot make changes willy-nilly without causing severe dislocations to the global economy. You're right that this is not a Biden vs. Trump issue, and that Trump also pursued policies that were highly inflationary. This is a "humans are predictably irrational" issue. They nearly always pursue policies that fix the problems they have now, even at the expense of causing problems that are highly likely to occur later. |
|
|
There's no proof of this it seems, while I agree it's one of many hypothesis, I find it crazy that you can jump from the hypothesis to conclude it's true just like that.
How do you simply dismiss all the other possibilities and compounding factors? There was a never seen before global pandemic, there was major disruptions in production and sourcing of goods, there was a major attrition and rotation of the labor force, there's the conflict with Russia, there were dramatically overvalued stocks, there was a trade war, there was a ton of people that died, etc.
I'd be suspicious of anyone who claims they just know the truth here, follow your guts isn't a proven way to determine what's really happening. I need some more proof, a simulation model, some actual experiments, etc.
The intuition of experts is often more likely correct, but economists are very divided here, to me it still feels like we don't know the cause of the inflation, we don't properly understand why it's happening and how to fix it.
Another aspect that's also been bothering me is that it isn't clear if inflation is a problem or not. Say it was caused by too much money having been injected, ok prices go up, but everybody has extra money, so it evens out, and doesn't really mean anyone is worse off.
Inflation doesn't really seem like it necessarily implies people are worse off, especially from the point of view of: would that person had been worse off if they'd have been evicted from their home during the pandemic and lost their job and not been given out support? Or are they worse off having had that help to make it past that and now have to deal with some inflation?
Especially assuming the inflation is due to increase money supply.
Like I just feel the actual effects of inflation are also not clear.
If inflation is driven by a loss of jobs, lack of goods, and difficulty sourcing materials, that's bad, even ignoring the inflation that's bad. If inflation is caused from too much money but there's still enough jobs, goods, and sourcing is easy and cheap, is that bad?