Socialism

[DBTrek]

Economics is one of those boxes even skeptical people can't break out of.

Inflation only occurs when consumption > production. As long as consumption = production, and Markets have not monopolized, it doesn't make any difference how much money there is AS I ALREADY PROVED SEVERAL POSTS BACK BECAUSE DEBT IS EXACTLY LIKE PRINTING MONEY; it's just semantics.

That's when Demand-Pull inflation occurs, as you've described. There's also Cost-Push inflation. But I'm talking about inflation due to the physical printing of dollars which creates an overabundance of "goods", thereby driving up supply and down demand, thereby decreasing value.

(Links for people interested, not suggesting you don't know what Demand-Pull inflation is)

[heydaralon]

Here is an idea:

Instead of printing money, we should do a money for guns program.

In the past, Cash for guns allowed dangerous criminals to turn their guns in to a local FEMA camp/Federal agency and they took the guns, and gave the gangster money. This led to a drop in violent crime and safer communities. In some areas, especially nursing homes, the gun homicide rate stayed around 0% after the program was implemented.

We have a debt now but since the government took all the guns, we can get the cash back by returning the guns to the public and asking them for money in return. Check it out: In a lot of poorer areas, these folks have a lot of cash from selling foodstamps for 50 cents per dollar, or dealing drugs. What they are always in need of is guns. So have the federal government set up an area where they sell the guns back to the ghetto for cash. They get guns which they need, govt gets $ that it needs. Win/win.

[Zlaxer]

Economics is one of those boxes even skeptical people can't break out of.

Inflation only occurs when consumption > production. As long as consumption = production, and Markets have not monopolized, it doesn't make any difference how much money there is AS I ALREADY PROVED SEVERAL POSTS BACK BECAUSE DEBT IS EXACTLY LIKE PRINTING MONEY; it's just semantics.

That's when Demand-Pull inflation occurs, as you've described. There's also Cost-Push inflation. But I'm talking about inflation due to the physical printing of dollars which creates an overabundance of "goods", thereby driving up supply and down demand, thereby decreasing value.

(Links for people interested, not suggesting you don't know what Demand-Pull inflation is)

Fed lending to banks causes way more inflation than physical printing of dollars...

[Fife]

Conflating inflation with consumer prices is a very common misstep, and nothing to be upset about getting straight on.

[DBTrek]

Well, the Fed sets the lending rates for dollars, if that's what you mean. But they can just as easily set high rates as low ones. So they can make dollars more available (inflation) or less available (deflation) at will.

[Fife]

I'm being really simplistic in terminology. Inflation/deflation is just a function of the money supply. The term "inflation" suffers great injury in everyday talk-talk.

The fed can't alchemy up extra gold; but conjuring up new federal reserve notes is their whole goddam raison d'etre ain't it?

[Martin Hash]

I'm trying to break you guys out of the thought jail you're in.

It's lonely in Hashland.

[Martin Hash]

There's so much money on this planet that every real thing could be bought multiple times over at their current prices, but that would increase consumption, which would increase inflation, until the price of things equaled how much money there was; it would be like extreme monetarism.

If there was no inflation, 1000 hundred-billionaires could own every single real thing in America, and 330 million people would be out on their asses eating grass. This is where concentration of wealth inevitably leads.

[DBTrek]

There's so much money on this planet that every real thing could be bought multiple times over at their current prices, but that would increase consumption, which would increase inflation, until the price of things equaled how much money there was; it would be like extreme monetarism.

If there was no inflation, 1000 hundred-billionaires could own every single real thing in America, and 330 million people would be out on their asses eating grass. This is where concentration of wealth inevitably leads.

That's an interesting thought, and one I'll have to explore further.

Though my initial reaction is: 1000 hundred-billionaires don't need all the pillows, hamburgers, chairs, and TV's we produce, so whether they could buy them or not is irrelevant since manufacturing is driven by demand, not the smallest number of people who could feasible buy all of a product. Also, anything these multi-billionaires want that number less than 1000 will inspire fierce competition which will take a toll on their resources.

But that doesn't make the general concept of 1000 multi-billionaires less intriguing, it just means they only account for the demand of 1000 people regardless of their actual wealth.

[Speaker to Animals]

The reality, I think, is that the government will eventually do this to pay off the national debt and we will all get fucked.