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Re:Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue? by marcosdumay on Sunday March 05, 2023 @08:40PM (#35036501)
Well, monetary changes maintain the mean purchase power. But people being able to buy necessities is more about median purchase power, or really the details of its distribution.

The mean purchase power has a very small impact on society.

Re:Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue? by ajross on Sunday March 05, 2023 @09:20PM (#35036763)
And I say a third time: if you want to have a discussion about unfair distribution of monetary effects on specific populations, you need to have that discussion and not just shout "inflation!". Because while your point is true, it's specious. Changes are always happening (c.f. eggs, mentioned upthread). The question isn't whether things are changing, it's about what is changing and what to do about it.
Re:Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue? by marcosdumay on Sunday March 05, 2023 @10:05PM (#35037062)
Still "elevated inflation disrupts the purchase power of most of the population" is a perfectly real phenomenon. It's not an "specific population", unless you think "almost everyone" is "specific".

And yes, the disruption tends to pass after the inflation goes away. But none of that makes the argument specious.

Re:Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue? by ajross on Sunday March 05, 2023 @11:19PM (#35037480)
"Elevated inflation reduces the impact of credit card and mortgage debt" is an equally real phenomenon, though. Without numbers your argument is specious. There are winners and losers. Whose losing and by how much? I'll give you a few losers: retirees on fixed incomes, and investment employees working on commission. And a few winners: homeowners, and young professionals with significant credit debt. There are lots of others. Feel free to advocate for the policies you think are appropriate. Just please stop with the "Inflation!" nonsense as a shorthand argument.
Re:Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue? by marcosdumay on Monday March 06, 2023 @11:23AM (#35042875)
> "Elevated inflation reduces the impact of credit card and mortgage debt" is an equally real phenomenon, though.

Yes, and it has a different temporal behavior from the impact on the purchase power. The same person can be affected by both.

As a rule, inflation infuriates people because almost everyone jut wakes up some day and discover they are much poorer than they used to be. You can't dismiss this by pointing that their net-worth improved. (But yes, the net-worth of a lot of people improves.)

Re:Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue? by ajross on Monday March 06, 2023 @12:50PM (#35044591)
> inflation infuriates people

I'll certainly grant this, not the least because they get terrible information about it from media and online sources.

> almost everyone jut wakes up some day and discover they are much poorer than they used to be

Like this. This is not true. This is a lie. You need to stop saying this. People are "much poorer" post-inflation only in the sense that they were "much richer" post-pandemic, due to the huge savings boom. If you aren't willing to look at the latter, then you're not doing the analysis correctly.

At most, "some" people are "much poorer" due to asymmetric effects. But you're just wrong here if you try to extend that to "almost everyone". Please stop.

Re:Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue? by chordalkeyboard on Monday March 06, 2023 @12:31AM (#35037802)
inflation is not scale-independent, the first goods to be bid up are the ones purchased by the people who receive the freshly minted funds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cantillon#Monetary_the...