Inflation is not price increases. If that is the definition then the metric is effectively useless. Prices can increase for any number of reasons, looking only at price changes doesn't tell us anything meaningful or actionable.

It absolutely does when the correct definition is still used. Inflation is an increase in money supply, that's really all there is to it.

Your point is why the use of "inflation" to mean price increases is so meaningless. Prices change for any number of reasons and you need context. When "inflation" still means in increase in the money supply there is no context required to know what it means, though obviously that's not all the information you need to understand the economy.

You are wrong and that's why you are misunderstood. I would suggest just saying "increase in money supply" if you mean increase of money supply instead of using a term that means "a continuing rise in the general price level". That will make people understand what you mean.

[0] https://www.clevelandfed.org/center-for-inflation-research/i...

[1] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/statistics/inflation

[2] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb-and-you/explainers/tell-me-mor...

That doesn't change the fact that the attempt to redefine it both co-opted the word and made it functionally useless. Prices change for all kinds of reasons. The amount of change alone is meaningless and using that meaning of the word allows economists today to play a lot of shell games with the numbers.

This is totally false. It dates to the inter-War period, specifically, to describe Weimar hyperinflation. (If you just look at money supply, it was bad. If you look at prices it was the disaster that it was.)

That's exactly how words get redefined.

Wittgenstien would like a word. Words always mean whatever the hell the speaker thinks they mean, which is always unverifiable. We should always endeavor to understand what people _think they mean_ instead of insisting on some (faulty) denotation.

The inflation argument is always frustrating. In a vacuum, inflating the _supply of money_ would delate the _price of money_ which inflates the _prices of goods_. Most people say "inflation" to mean the price of goods, but it does no good to insist that one definition means you can't use the word in other ways!

If you insist a cat is a dog, we're not playing a fun game - but that's up to me and up to you - Maybe someone in an undiscovered tribe doesn't know these words and wouldn't balk. If you say "dog" when you mean to insult someone, I might know what you're saying. But there is no mechanism to verify internal meaning.

I _strongly_ suggest reading some Wittgenstien if you're interested in this topic! If I say I speak Swedish fluently but refuse to ever utter a word, do I speak Swedish? Only our actions can vaguely point at our meaning. Language is a game we play with each other which does not and cannot communicate ultimate meaning. All we can do is agree or disagree to play games - animals dancing around a fire.

Each time the Romans debased their currency, they could be fairly confident that previous more valuable issues had a tendency to be hoarded if possible from that point on, and with a precise measure of the exact amount leaving the treasury could get a reasonably good estimate of how much was actually needed to be in general circulation. Perhaps the minimal amount to get by, perhaps not, maybe just depending on how generous Caesar felt at the time. And by offering a slightly more-than-fair exchange for the silver content, when issued, the amount that can afford to be hoarded can be deduced. While still turning a little bit of a "profit" from fractional percentages of silver that the general public can not measure accurately. Their central bankers were as shrewd as any existing today, equally as gifted mathematically as modern man can be.

Further inference can also be made about the resulting state of affairs by later following the private trading of recalled issues at "inflated" (previous) values.

If you were the one setting monetary policy risky enough that the chance for collapse was not as slim as it could be, you would want to know how close you were cutting it and the best way would probably be to get as good a handle on the money supply as you could, even if you could not gain full control. Nobody can anyway. But all effort always will be toward gaining more control.

This is basically the variable you could call _value of money_.

Not exactly the same as _price of money_, which is manipulable somewhat differently, but directly related to it in terms of _prices of goods_.

Which seems to be directly related to any type of inflation you can imagine :\

[0] Like the 1960's.