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0 pointssimonh3y ago0 comments

So you seem to be adding your voice in support for the article which, er, directly contradicts your views about money printing and current inflation.

Right now we know for a fact that current inflation is a genuine global shortage of actual stuff. Crude oil, cooking oil, wheat, Chinese products. Plus American government overspending, to be fair, but that's just a US phenomenon.

Of course that's inconvenient if you really desperately want to complain that you specifically are being cheated. After all if you have less, it must be because somebody else has more, right?

If we're all screwed, who do you blame? Putin and Xi are far away and broadly hated already, so there's no satisfaction to be had blaming anything on them.

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bko3y ago

> Plus American government overspending, to be fair, but that's just a US phenomenon.

That's not true. US spent the most, but Europe spent €3.2 trillion. US spent $12 trillion but they had to "shore up" a lot of global banks because that's just what they do. About half went into asset purchases and liquidity measures.

I take a simple approach. What would you expect to happen if you just created trillions out of thin air and distributed it? Arguing nothing would happen is the economic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. It just doesn't pass the smell test to me because you can just create global wealth from changing some numbers in a computer with no repercussions. It's alchemy. Can I "prove" that there are negative consequences that in the long run outweigh the benefits? No. But I can say that I cannot find a single case of high inflation that did not coincide with government printing money. Printing a lot of money doesn't always cause inflation, but any time there is inflation there has been a lot of money printing.

Sure what happens may not be predictable, but its obvious that you're messing with a complex system and effects aren't instantaneous or uniform. That's why you see things like product X is going up 50% while product Y is going up 5%. And the people that point this out think they're debunking something.

With complex systems its best to keep things simple. You can get lost in the data from all the noise and overconfidence will bite you in the ass. Which is why it's not a smart idea to increase the money supply by 30+% in a year and dump it into the market.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/european-union-financ...

https://www.covidmoneytracker.org/

kqr3y ago

> Printing a lot of money doesn't always cause inflation, but any time there is inflation there has been a lot of money printing.

In fact, you can even argue that inflation causes a lot of money printing! When the government has trouble affording things that have gotten more expensive, they have to print more money to be able to buy the services they need!

(Of course, any responsible government would then also provide a drain for the corresponding amount of excess money -- e.g. tax it back out of existence shortly thereafter -- but somehow it's much easier to get elected when you promise to buy things, and not so much when you promise to tax the money away again...)

simonhOP3y ago

The excess inflation in the US (above that in Europe) isn’t due to pandemic spending or increased money supply, it’s demand driven due to the Biden infrastructure bill. The supply side can’t meet the increased demand, leading to excess inflation.

Look, I’d have voted for him too given the options, and probably still would, but his economic policy is ill advised.

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