• ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    We have history that we can learn from where we’ve had deflation and could observe the effects. The wealthy are the ones not buying products in deflationary environments, or otherwise big ticket purchases for the rest of us. Those big purchases involve a lot of money changing hands, but above and beyond that, there’s also a lack of capital investment, because the investor has no incentive to do anything except to put their money under their mattress, once again not circulating it. If there’s constant low inflation, the investor is guaranteed to lose money keeping it under their mattress but has a good chance at making more money by investing it into companies who use it to hire people and produce things that people want to spend money on.

    Do you think that every article written about inflation just happens to forget that prices are still rising? Or do you think there’s a reason there are basically no economists anywhere arguing that deflation is what we should have instead?

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Do you think that every article written about inflation just happens to forget that prices are still rising?

      I think media organizations owned by billionaires are going to keep repeating what billionaires want the poor people to hear…

      And that with rampant wealth inequality what’s good for “the economy” is rarely good for the average person.

      I thought as a society, we all understood that by now…

      But you don’t seem to have gotten any of the memos.

      • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        What you might call a memo, I’d call a poor explanation to confirm your biases. Do some reading on how economists came to their conclusions, and you’ll see why we arrived at an ideal environment of some low inflation. If economics reporters were only serving at the behest of billionaires, we’re in an age of unprecedented access to information, and economics is almost entirely math. If someone wanted to be a whistleblower and show the math to back it up, it would have gone viral by now, and that still would have to contradict a working model of reality that makes sense for what we all understand about inflation. There will always be some percentage of people who don’t thrive in whatever our economic conditions are, and that sucks, but I don’t think anyone’s been able to show a system where we can save literally everyone, because as human beings, our flaws tend to get in the way of that. Still, that low amount of inflation tends to be the best we can do.

        • rektdeckard@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I mostly agree with you, but economics is at best a heaping tablespoon of math and a sack of human behavioral psychology. Those guys really only know what’s going on 6 months after it happened.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          If economics reporters were only serving at the behest of billionaires,

          I just can’t believe someone that doesn’t understand billionaires own media companies to control the public narrative still exists in 2024.

          Still, that low amount of inflation tends to be the best we can do.

          Because straight capitalism is unsustainable…

          But you want it to be the only option and will accept everything else we need to prop it up.

          Have a nice life, don’t expect any more replies.

          • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            It’s far easier to explain the world with historic precedent than it is with conspiracy theories.