• CapeWearingAeroplane@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    You have to remember: Inflation tells you how fast prices are increasing. We want a certain degree of inflation (typically around 2% is healthy for the economy). The problem occurs when inflation is too high, so that wages don’t keep up, that’s what we’re seeing now. When inflation decreases, that means prices are growing less fast, not that they’re decreasing.

    Decreasing prices (across the board) would be deflation, which is terrible (think Great Depression / 1930’s Germany terrible). If your 100$ is worth more tomorrow than it is today, then why would you spend it today? You wouldn’t (except for necessities). That leads to a massive drop in investments, not only in the “Wall street” sense, but in things like building houses, building factories, hiring people etc. it also causes wages to decrease. This goes on until production and wages hit a low point where there’s huge amounts of money in circulation, very low production/employment, and very low prices. That’s when you get a whiplash to a situation where everyone has money to buy stuff, but no one is making it, aaaaand we have HyperInflation™

    In short: Your 100$ has in fact never been worth less than now, and that’s a good thing. We just want it to decrease in value more slowly, and things are going in the right direction. It could still take a year or two for wages to catch back up, but we’ll get there. Current policies are helping the situation.

      • CapeWearingAeroplane@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        9 months ago

        I won’t repeat the whole argument, but I have to admit like it seems you didn’t catch the core part.

        You should be able to get food and survival on basic pay. Prices should increase slowly over time. Basic pay should therefore increase at the same pace, or slightly faster, than prices are increasing. The issue you have now is not really the current inflation, but that inflation has outpaced wage growth for the past couple of years. Price growth isn’t a problem if everybodies wages increase at the same rate as the prices grow, or faster, agree?

        Now that inflation has slowed down, wages just need a little time to catch up. <= That right there is an important point. You don’t want prices to decrease to match your current pay. That breaks the economy bad. You want your wage to increase to match the current prices.

        Another major issue you have is that minimum wage hasn’t kept up with inflation, that’s a regulatory issue. Also your unions had their collective back broken a couple decades ago, that didn’t help either.