Inflation info

failed socialist entitlement programs

 

That source looks golden...like the gold they probably try to sell on that site...

 

Measuring Worth - Measures of worth, inflation rates, saving calculator, relative value, worth of a dollar, worth of a pound, purchasing power, gold prices, GDP, history of wages, average wage

Consumer price index - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Even the CPI is contested as being "cooked" to downplay the severity of things.

 

You don't need to be a Ron Paul fan to know about inflation, but the majority who know about inflation are his fans since he's the only politician who preaches against the evils inherit in it.

Anyways, inflation's very simple to understand. More dollars chasing limited goods and services causes prices to rise. Inflation is the expansion of the money supply, and price increases are the effect. Money is something that represents things. Money has no value if it didn't represent things, i.e. goods or labor. So when money is created from nothing the only way it can represent anything real is to take the value of other, already existing dollars.

So what is actually happening when the government prints money is that it is stealing the wealth of the people. That is necessary because the government doesn't create any wealth of their own. The only way they can "create" wealth through money printing is to take it from everyone else. Every time the government expands the money supply they are quite literally stealing from you, and everyone else who is at the bottom of the inflation food chain. Of course some benefit from this, obviously the government benefits, and those who spend the money first also benefit. It takes a while for new money in our system to filter all the way down to the average person. That's why there is a 1-2 year delay from the time of monetary expansion to the time of prices rising from that expansion. The delay is due to our fractional reserve banking system. Money needs to be borrowed, deposited, borrowed again, deposited again, and so on in order for fractional reserve banking to expand it to it's final amount. So anyone who uses the money first is using it before prices have gone up, so they benefit from the newly created money. People who can use it first are government (Federal employees of all kinds), government contractors (military industrial complex), the major banks who borrow directly from the Fed, the biggest corporations, foreign central banks, etc.

That's why it's such a taboo subject in Washington. Other than Ron Paul pretty much no one talks about it, because it directly benefits government at the expense of the people. All politics is is seeing how much money you can get for your district/state/etc, so that you can bribe the people to get elected. That is 99% of what politicians do. So in order to spend the most money possible, you have to be in on the inflation thievery. Also if the government couldn't debase the currency to fund wars, welfare, etc., it would have to raise taxes anytime it wanted to spend more money on anything. That would prevent them from going bat shit crazy with spending because they wouldn't be able to tax as much as would be needed, the people would revolt. So instead of direct taxation, they use the hidden method of money printing, which is just as much of a tax, but one they can keep secret.

When you understand what inflation is, a hidden tax, you see why no amount of inflation is good. The Federal Reserve I think generally targets around 3% inflation, and they make it sound like a good and noble thing to do, but in reality it has no benefits of any kind. Even 1% inflation has most of the negative effects of hyperinflation, it just happens much slower. The people who lose to inflation are basically everyone except those I mentioned that benefit from it. The people hit hardest are people on fixed income and anyone who saves money. The poor and middle class are hurt the most, the rich aren't affected as much. That's why the middle class is disappearing. In a nation who resorts to inflation and nation building overseas, the inevitable result is the destruction of the middle class. It slowly goes away as the middle class are transformed into the poor, and the rich keep getting richer. Inflation would hurt wealthy people also if they aren't smart with their money, but if they know what they are doing, it's not hard to make enough interest on your money to outpace inflation (and profit heavily from various crashes).

The theory that deflation is bad and must be prevented by steady inflation is total bs. It's just statist propaganda. Do people say it's a bad thing when the prices of computers, tvs, phones, etc. goes down? No, it's a good thing. Everyone benefits when prices on things comes down. The ones who benefit the most are the poor, since they obviously have the least money to spend. Cheaper prices are fantastic for them. That's all that would happen if the money supply wasn't increased. The purchasing power of every dollar would consistently increase. Prices of things would steadily go down. Even if you didn't get a raise at your job, you would still get a raise in real wages because of deflation. Steady, slow deflation is what happens with sound money (gold standard), and it's a great thing for everyone, except a government who wishes to steal to support it's cancerous growth.

There's more to say about the subject, but that's the main stuff. Just search for 'inflation' on Ludwig von Mises Institute if you want to learn more.