There’s a lot of talk about inflation and its causes. Is it corporate greed? Supply chain issues? One clear base cause of inflation less talked about is having an inflationary currency supply. Any other inflation caused by supply chain issues, corporate greed, lack of market competition, etc is just added on top of that. Fiat inflationary currency is a rather new invention in terms of the human timeline. In the US, Nixon is the start of it. Central banks aim for 2-3% inflation in “good years”. The money supply expands, the portion of that supply a single dollar represents, and therefore its value, decreases. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s government policy, and both parties gleefully support it because it benefits their rich donors.
Think of it: in the last 50 years, everything has gotten cheaper to produce thanks to increasing mechanization, outsourcing to cheap labor/low regulation countries, and extremely efficient supply chains. Yet so many things “cost more” than they did 50 years ago. Even basics like bread. What used to be 5c in the US in the 50s now costs $5.00. How is that the case? Shouldn’t it cost less? Where is that “extra efficiency” going if not to lower prices? The answer: bread is the same value it’s always been, the money has gotten less valuable. This is how they keep working class people running on a treadmill, never able to achieve economic mobility.
Inflationary currency devalues the currency you worked hard to earn by increasing the supply. It hits the middle class the worst because they have more of their net wealth in cash, often in the form of emergency funds, savings, and putting together enough money for a down payment on a home. Rich people have their money in assets which aren’t harmed by currency inflation. Actually, even worse, it inflates the value of those assets! If the dollar loses value (all other things being equal), it takes more dollar to buy a share in Amazon, just like it takes more dollars to buy a loaf of bread. Poor people live hand to mouth, so their net wealth is not impacted much, but inflationary currency prevents them from saving and “moving up”. If you want to identify the causes of increasing wealth disparity, the inability of people to save money and theft of value from the middle class via money supply expansion is a major one.
Freezing inflation wouldn’t change the fact that a dollar invested in an asset will have a higher rate of return than a dollar that’s just sitting under your mattress doing nothing.
That is a desired feature of the economy – that people are rewarded for investing their money instead of just keeping it out of circulation indefinitely.
The real problem here is that ordinary people can’t afford assets because the wealthy have basically all of them. Tax the heck out of the wealthy, to the point where they must sell their assets.
Then ordinary people can buy those assets.
Probably using financing, which is aided by inflationary currency by the way.
Suppose you buy a 300k house on a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage. Let’s check back in 20 years. That house is worth way more than 300k now, but your outstanding principal is something like 150k, which in 2044-dollars is chump change. Your monthly payments at that point are a breeze compared to now.
Yes, assets are protected from inflation more than cash is. Yes, the rich have all the assets, so they’re protected from inflation.
No, the solution is not to eliminate inflation.
The solution is to take back the assets which have been stolen from the working class over the past 60 years. Tax the wealthy. Severely.