[o2sd98]

I think I may have not been clear, or I am misinterpreting your post.

If you think of a person as having a balance sheet, with assets (property, shares, bonds, cash) and liabilities (loans), and a profit and loss of revenues (salary, dividends, coupons, rents, i.e cashflows) and expenses (food, shelter, clothing, transport, interest etc), then inflation:

* increases the value of your assets => asset prices rise with inflation

* decreases your liabilities => loan balances stay constant in nominal terms, but in real terms the liability is decreasing.

* increases your income => wages and salaries rise with inflation

* increases your expenses => the price of consumables increases with inflation.

So, ideally, in a high inflation environment, you want to hold as many assets as you can afford, levered as much as possible, with a high income, and low expenses.

So the rich purchase assets with debt. Inflation pushes the price of assets up, and the real value of the debt down. I agree that the assets you purchase should generate a cashflow to cover the financing drag. Inflation also increases dividends, rents and coupons.

Because the poor have expenses (outgoings) equal to or greater than income (wages, salary), price inflation erodes their disposable income, and price inflation is elastic, but wages are sticky, so the poor are always playing catchup, and in the interim, the rich are buying up their assets with cheap debt.

[seanmcdirmid]

The poor have nothing to protect from inflation: they don't have significant savings, they spend their income the day/week/month that they get it. Their wages should go up to match inflation, and if they don't, its not really related to inflation itself but stingy bosses who aren't sharing increased prices (since given inflation, prices are supposed to rise, right?).

The rich are both lending and borrowing money; again, who do you think they are borrowing money from? Who are they buying the assets from? Again, it is not the poor, unless you are suggesting they are accumulating previously non-existing or non-utilized assets?

[o2sd98]

Stingy bosses has got nothing to do with it. Those who control the means of production can set their prices. The poor's only means of rising wages is through force (either government intervention or strike action). Any wage increase they receive is eaten by inflation. If prices started deflating, it is the poor who would immediately benefit and the rich would immediately be worse off. This is why the rich lobby politicians and academics to maintain inflation at any cost. Once prices start deflating, the immediate effect is relief for the poor and credit stress for the rich. The poor have no savings because they are inflated away. Look at the GINI index for the US and Japan during the "lost decades". In deflationary Japan, the index contracted (i.e. wealth disparity declined), in the inflationary US, it increased.

The rich are not borrowing from each other. Banks create money endogenously. They are buying existing assets from each other, and they are also buying new assets as they are created. Without inflation, asset purchases would look less attractive on a cash return basis, so inflation does serve that purpose. However, persistent inflation is forcing the market to be investors when they may want to save or spend.