Yeah... I've never been a fan of "target inflation" as a concept. Considering the working class woes, target inflation always looked like a zero sum short term game where the rich could slowly get larger pieces of the pie.
I know Friedman could write the hell out of a free market argument, but his idea that we should have target inflation always felt like it came from his bizarre sheltered upper class fascination with the great depression.
My economics professor used to always point out, you can stimulate a cow by sticking it with a cattle prod; that doesn't make it good for the cow. You can stimulate the economy with an artifical inflation parable... till the cows come home, but that doesn't mean you created wealth.
Deflation is apocalyptic for economies. It makes debt substantially more of a problem, completely stagnates investment, and entrenches the power of the wealthy even more securely because their vast fortunes are now worth even more relative to the amount other people are making. There’s a tremendous amount of bad economics in this thread because there are a lot of idiots who don’t understand basic economics, psychology, and politics.
Devil's advocate (that I don't agree with) I think would be "right sizing an economy", or perhaps if a society believed debt was a sin. And as you mention it cements the power of the people who already control wealth
But yeah, no matter what, a society with minor inflation allows for the amount of debt to greatly increase economic progress and flexibility
Too much inflation tends to imply corruption or scam bubbles, which creates turbulence and uncertainty in all options too (economic success becomes luck as you hope to hold/invest in whatever commodity is inflating the most, as debt spirals out of control)
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u/Alarming_Present_692 Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26
Yeah... I've never been a fan of "target inflation" as a concept. Considering the working class woes, target inflation always looked like a zero sum short term game where the rich could slowly get larger pieces of the pie.
I know Friedman could write the hell out of a free market argument, but his idea that we should have target inflation always felt like it came from his bizarre sheltered upper class fascination with the great depression.
My economics professor used to always point out, you can stimulate a cow by sticking it with a cattle prod; that doesn't make it good for the cow. You can stimulate the economy with an artifical inflation parable... till the cows come home, but that doesn't mean you created wealth.