Have we been thinking about inflation all wrong?

Re:Have we been thinking about inflation all wrong? by TameAntelope on Thursday February 10, 2022 @03:15PM (#30291836)

We may need inflation to drive job growth now, and we've definitely needed inflation to drive better job growth. An office job being created because a paper company can support an additional employee due to inflation is a better situation than continuing to work in a warehouse job. Inflation will eventually recede, but that new job will give opportunity to the worker.

Scale that up by a factor of millions across the country, and you've closed the income gap. That's the power of inflation.

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Re:Have we been thinking about inflation all wrong? by oonerspism on Thursday February 10, 2022 @04:01PM (#30292450)

The truly poor do not have jobs, nor much hope of one in future. They are on fixed state incomes at best, which if they are lucky may have a trivial rise some years after the fact.

We don't need to get terribly cerebral to note the basic mechanism of proportion, whereby $10 added to the daily food cost of a person who makes $50/day is vastly more impactful than the same $10 added to the daily food cost of a person who makes $500/day.

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Re:Have we been thinking about inflation all wrong? by TameAntelope on Thursday February 10, 2022 @04:11PM (#30292599)

The whole point is that $10 added daily food cost results in the food producer being able to hire more employees, which means the person who makes $0/day can make $300/day now.

Also these numbers are super weird. It's probably more like $10 total daily food cost going up to like $10.30, and going from making $30/day (part time minimum wage) to $50 (near full-time minimum wage).

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Re:Have we been thinking about inflation all wrong? by oonerspism on Friday February 11, 2022 @03:15AM (#30298579)

The numbers were symbolic to illustrate proportional effect.

I'm not seeing a great deal of causation in your theory. The same amount of food is being produced, thus the same amount of work is done - so extra employees are not required. If anything, in your closed system theory, the food producer is going to laugh and pocket extra profits.

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Re:Have we been thinking about inflation all wrong? by TameAntelope on Friday February 11, 2022 @12:10PM (#30303924)

The same amount of food is not produced, more food is produced because it's the only way the food company can keep up with inflation.

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Re:Have we been thinking about inflation all wrong? by oonerspism on Friday February 11, 2022 @04:47PM (#30307402)

Who is buying and eating the extra food? Did human stomach volume increase proportional to inflation?

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/the-conversation-inflati...

Show me which countries have wage growth for lower socioeconomic demographics currently matching or outpacing CPI? It is not happening.

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