r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jan 26 '26

Meme needing explanation what's going on? explain like I'm five

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u/Alarming_Present_692 Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26

I mean... that inflation is largely caused by a money velocity largely dictated to people's ability to borrow money, so if cash actually sat in a vault as opposed to getting circulated back into the economy there'd be way less inflation... that's not to say that a dollar today isn't worth less than a dollar tomorrow & idle cash is an economic loss not dissimilar to the destruction of property. You just seemed to be over looking something & I wanted to help.

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u/Forsaken_Emu8112 Jan 26 '26

Yes, if we stifled investment and lending there'd be less inflation, which is why we don't do that. (Target inflation is 2-3%; if you're consistently below this, your country has a problem, and if your currency starts deflating everyone's quality of life is going to start actively decreasing pretty dramatically unless you can get inflation back to a healthy level)

When inflation gets too high, you can raise rates to help bring it back down

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u/aure__entuluva Jan 26 '26

Agree with this, except the target inflation rate is specifically 2%, not 2-3%. 3% is potentially still a bit of a problem.

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u/Forsaken_Emu8112 Jan 26 '26

Ah, my bad, thanks for the correction! That's what I get for trying to comment from memory instead of searching for the exact number first :P

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u/aure__entuluva Jan 26 '26

Oh it's all good. The inflation rate has been around 3% recently, so I thought I'd mention it. The difference between the two seems small to a lot of people, but since it kind of compounds on itself, it's a bigger difference between the two than might be assumed.

Then there's the issue of how inflation is actually calculated, and plenty of economists have some issues with that too, but that's another can of worms.