Ask HN: Lost Economic Theories: Printing Inflation-Free Money?

Re:Ask HN: Lost Economic Theories: Printing Inflation-Free M... by BitwiseFool on Thursday November 05, 2020 @10:36AM (#24999120)

Inflation is also a mechanism for paying off debt. This is one of the reasons why governments abhor deflation - it makes paying off publicly held debt more difficult.

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Re:Ask HN: Lost Economic Theories: Printing Inflation-Free M... by dnautics on Thursday November 05, 2020 @10:40AM (#24999153)

Yeah, I should have been more specific. Raising taxes lets you pay off debt, often by hitting the rich harder. Inflation lets you devalue debt, making it easier to pay it off, by hitting the poor harder.

In both cases, debt is accrued mostly by paying middle class bureaucrats and already-rich contractors to perform the "functions of government".

If you inflate, you are sneakily transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. So, why stop?

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Re:Ask HN: Lost Economic Theories: Printing Inflation-Free M... by johbjo on Thursday November 05, 2020 @11:39AM (#24999634)

Governments have the right to print money.

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