Countries chose inflation because it's less obvious way to tax people, and because screwing over labor makes you short term competitive in trade markets (they took er jerbs). Especially as other countries inflate. It's an easy choice to make.
> Countries chose inflation because it's less obvious way to tax people
I think you're missing significant understanding about money and inflation.
Explain carefully how inflation taxes people to the benefit of the govt. Your explanation should carefully distinguish between the Fed and the Treasury, the three methods the Fed used to influence the rate, the laws and accounting both use.
I'm pretty sure you have no idea, and are simply making up ghost stories to cover misunderstandings.
So, explain the process. Because I do know in detail how these pieces fit, and nothing like your beliefs occur. So you explain it.
Oh, and by the way, inflation helps nearly anyone with debt such a college loans, car loans, or mortgages, because it lowers effective payments. Given most people have more debt than cash as savings, inflation helps borrowers and costs lenders.
Think about that a bit
> Oh, and by the way, inflation helps nearly anyone with debt such a college loans, car loans, or mortgages, because it lowers effective payments
Only if you are getting pay raises. We know the workers return on productivity has stagnated since 1970. Why do you love stealing from the poor?
Lowering the cost to borrow by volume mostly helps finance: big corporate bonds, and financial instruments like shorts and options.
Think about that for a bit.
It's not the same, as the evidence I just posted proves. That you don't care to learn it is telling. The string evidence that things were worse is what led every country to switch to central banking.
Or are you that much smarter than every economist and banker on the planet? Maybe you should post a paper with your evidence. Overturning over a century of data across hundreds of countries would make you famous.
>Only if you are getting pay raises. We know the workers return on productivity has stagnated since 1970
First, the "only if you are getting pay raises" is false. It would depend on the loan and wage.
Also, your two claims do not even make logical sense. Either they got pay raises or incomes did not remain flat. (Hint: they got pay raises, AND they got increases in total remuneration, which includes things besides wages. And yes, wages are flat, but remuneration and total cost to employ (both data series the BLS tracks which you can check yourself) have increased).
Want proof of all this? It took me one google of "do wages match inflation over time", and this [1] from the first page provides historical graphs showing exactly what I claimed.
So yes, people did get raises to match inflation (which is trivially checkable), their effective loan payments did decrease.
Please at least put in some effort to check the numerical evidence before you post more stuff you just pull from god knows where.
>Lowering the cost to borrow by volume mostly helps finance: big corporate bonds, and financial instruments like shorts and options
You apparently have no idea the difference between cost to borrow and inflation. The cost to borrow is the interest rate - no one knows future inflation well enough to make a loan with such wizardry. Higher than expected inflation simply helps borrowers and costs lenders. Inflation the other direction works in the opposite direction.
But cost to borrow and inflation are completely different things.
Since you're just making stuff up, please provide decent sources (not opinion blogs - decent polling or data places are good) for any further claims. You're too untrustworthy for me to waste more time on.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
And others, like you perhaps, read the content and learn something useful.
No, that's not at all the reason. Low targeted inflation is to prevent the wild economic swings that preceded central banking as wild inflation and deflation routinely wiped out people, including low income laborers. Take some time with this list of historical US recessions [1]
Virtually zero people hold pure cash as their only wealth, so virtually zero people lose value over time from low inflation. Other goods like real estate, stocks, etc., rise with inflation. Wages rise with inflation. So your low income laborer part getting robbed makes no sense.
The reason inflation target of zero is not used is to avoid deflationary spirals, a lesson learned again over history through repeated painful events.
The evidence on these is so solid every single country, all 200ish choose this system. It's not a grand conspiracy of evil wizard people. It's what educated people choose as a solution to past problems. If other systems worked better for an economy, don't you think at least 1 of 200ish countries would be doing it?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...