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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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There was a brief period when people got direct cash during the pandemic which businesses used as an excuse to hike up prices. However, once again, it was the choice of the business owners to raise the prices.
Only if that money goes to the working people who can in turn spend it. If the money stays at the top then it does not result in increased spending power. Most of the money that was created did not end up in the hands of the people who are spending it day to day. Bulk of the money went to the oligarchs, you get that right?
I think they saw an opportunity to jack up prices. In fact, we see this happen any time there's a disaster, no money printing is needed here. There's even a term for this: disaster capitalism.
You still haven't explained what your thesis here is exactly. If capitalists aren't raising wages then people don't have more spending power no matter how much money is printed. What you still haven't established here is how there's more money circulating in the economy when wages have remained stagnant. Nobody is arguing that the oligarchs aren't benefiting from the QE, but it's not a direct cause of inflation.
Ok, but capitalists aren't the ones primarily consuming basic goods they raise the prices on. We're talking about consumer inflation here. An oligarch getting a big cash infusion and buying up land or hiring servers isn't affecting the prices of consumer goods.
That still doesn't change the formula for inflation which is the relative cost of goods and services to salaries.
And who decides that it's now circulating for $10? The business owner decides that, which was my original point all along!
Meanwhile, your example is too simplistic because there isn't $10 circulating since economy isn't homogeneous. People consuming regular goods who are affected by inflation didn't get a chunk of the new money printed, so they have exact same spending power they did when there was $5 circulating.
They don't have to increase, people who own businesses make a conscious decision to increase them. You're also conflating the amount of money in circulation with purchasing power here.
We're in complete agreement here.
This doesn't apply to vast majority of the population who don't actually own any land.
Are you saying companies wouldn't want to produce and sell more goods if there was demand for them?
More money in circulation does not magically make prices increase, people who own businesses choose on what they charge. Increase in money supply also doesn't translate into decreased purchasing power all on its own.
Again, the types of goods that oligarchs consume are not the same goods that regular people consume.
That's nonsensical, if you're buying up all the oranges in town and I eat apples, the scarcity of oranges has no effect on me.
No, it's not.
LMAO, financial economy isn't some money pit that people dive into and grab as much as they can. Working people get money from their wages, and their wages don't magically increase when the money supply is increased.
Yeah this is not really what’s happening. QE went on for a long time before inflation really took off and mostly served to inflate asset prices without any meaningful effect on the price of consumer goods. As has been said, this is because that’s where the lion’s share of rich people’s money goes.
I think the key data point here is the increase in profits recently. Which would not be happening if this was all down to bog standard supply and demand throughout supply chains. Parking money in assets like stocks and real estate doesn’t cause consumer price inflation. But if businesses all realized that the talk of supply chain disruptions and COVID causing prices to go up was a good excuse to raise prices further together, that would exacerbate an otherwise minor bout of consumer price inflation. Which is exactly what happened.
And although it’s pretty damn close to collusion/price fixing in many cases, there is no real enforcement against that sort of thing. There is software that is used throughout industries that basically does the price fixing for you using data from other users/firms. Makes it easy and plausibly deniable because it was just an algorithm that told you to do it. Big part of rent inflation in particular. If there’s no competitor willing to undercut you, even though they could, the Econ 101 bullshit doesn’t really apply. It’s basically just class solidarity among capitalists. Circling the wagons because unusual circumstances temporarily drove wages up, and they weren’t having it.
Anyway, the main point is, if profit rates are going up, it’s not money supply causing the inflation.
I feel like we're just going in circles here. Unless workers get higher wages, their capacity to pay rent does not change.
And that doesn't change the situation for the workers in any way because their wages are not rising.
Currency does not represent wealth, and if anything currency only impacts financial wealth. When currency starts depreciating in value then people who own significant portion of financial wealth simply transfer it into physical assets or move it to other currencies. All this has little to do with internal inflation mechanics of the country.
I didn't ignore this, I've addressed this multiple times in my replies. I'll address it for the 4th time I guess. Capitalists spending more on land/labor/raw materials does not translate into increased wages or increased spending power of the workers. Let me know if you need me to clarify that further for you.
You evidently missed the point being made.
How many people agree with an idea says nothing about the merit of the idea. Plenty of western economists agree that neoliberal economics work and that you can do QE indefinitely.
Once again, prices go up as a result of people who own businesses choosing to raise them. It's incredible that you continue to refuse to acknowledge this simple fact.
Finally, since you clearly just ignore what I say, maybe you can listen to an economist explain this instead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH1tT4NW8NI
We really are going in circles here. However, one thing I will point out is that billionaires didn't lack liquid assets to buy up things like housing before money printing started. What facilitated that was the fact that lots of people ended up becoming insolvent during the pandemic. Businesses went under, people weren't able to afford their mortgages, and so on. This forced people to put their assets up on the market at which point the billionaires started buying them up.
For money printing to affect general spending, the money has to go to regular people. There was a brief period during the start of the pandemic when that happened, and that did end up heating up the economy briefly. That's when a lot of the inflation happened because businesses realized they could now jack up prices since people had cash to spend.