I guess I'm trying to understand why we need some people to not have jobs, and also why the same people who say this fight so hard against helping folks in bad spots. If having unemployment is so important, why does everyone treat the unemployed as morally inferior - it's clearly a vital economic function.

edit: to put it another way - (extending your metaphor) who is doing the eating of us normal workers? Why am I someone's food?

So the rest work harder, which means less dollars for more work, which makes prices go down (or rather: not rise quite as quickly). Banks can't fix things, they can just cause more pain on poor people, so they fix things.

That inflation is mostly caused by oil prices, and no amount of extra work by people will make oil prices drop ... This is why we've had recessions before, this is why it's happening now ... is something the central banks or government cannot influence, and therefore this "cannot" be the cause (granted, this is true but doesn't provide a solution, so from a utilitarian perspective one might agree with this).

The FED is making things worse, but hasn't yet been sufficiently scared into turning things around. The stock market is only ~20% down, and they usually turn things around at about a 35% drop. So we're already past the halfway point, and FANGs (except FB/META) are holding out quite well, so they seem to be safe harbors.

Nobody is excited about increasing unemployment, and you don't always need more unemployment to tame inflation.

The idea is that in the specific current situation of inflation disaster, measures required to tame inflation maybe required.

Like a infection, first line of defense is antibiotics, but if you wind up in a bad situation, you may need to take a more harmful response like amputation.

So who is going to be the ones who have to suffer for it?

I'm guessing its not the folks who could afford a stint unemployed that will be asked to do vital economic functions. I wonder how many people y'all are going to kill for your inflation woes.

I get it though, all these people who just got jobs and who just moved to better jobs are way too uppity and need to be put down. Heaven forbid they do anything that isn't worry about paying for a slightly comfortable life. Good for you, helping to put those hard working folks in their place - they don't need anything other than stress and worry and work.

Who do you think is hurt by inflation? Largely the same people hurt by unemployment.

Someone with a million dollar mortgage and inflation proof investments is probably cheering on inflation.

A family struggling to buy food and shoes for their children suffers from inflation.

A family is going to struggle a lot more when they can't get a fucking job.

I agree, it is just a question of balancing numbers. Is it better for a 100 families to struggle with costs, 1,000, ect

I dont think anyone is trying to argue that unemployment is a good thing in an absolute sense.