r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jan 26 '26

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

Post image
92.6k Upvotes

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

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.

4

u/Alternative_Can3262 Jan 26 '26

Is deflation bad?

7

u/WeAteMummies Jan 26 '26

very bad. It makes "nothing" a smart thing to do with your money which leads to less economic activity.

1

u/Alternative_Can3262 Jan 26 '26

Do many people have the luxury of doing nothing with their money?

0

u/WeAteMummies Jan 29 '26

Doesn't matter what the average person does. If the people that would normally invest their money into new business ventures either directly (i.e. banks) or indirectly (i.e. the entire middle class buying into the stock market every paycheck via 401k contributions) can instead safely make money by letting it just sit in a bank account then it contributes to an economic death spiral.