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- From: david@cats.ucsc.edu (David Michael Wright)
- Newsgroups: sci.econ
- Subject: Re: Since no one is defending inflation, (was re: Inflation)
- Date: 22 Jan 1993 00:58:10 GMT
- Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
- Lines: 28
- Message-ID: <1jngr2INNfq7@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>
- References: <38299@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> <24793@hacgate.SCG.HAC.COM> <1993Jan21.211928.8356@athena.mit.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: si.ucsc.edu
-
-
- In article <1993Jan21.211928.8356@athena.mit.edu> cmk@athena.mit.edu (Charles M Kozierok) writes:
-
- |how is [inflation] good? it is rather simplistic to just look at the increasing
- |price of your house without also considering how the price of everything
- |else is also increasing, and the fact that the bottom tier of house
- |buyers is pushed out of the market.
-
- Unanticipated inflation is, in general, a good thing: if wages are
- sticky it gives you the opportunity to work if the real wage is
- reduced, it makes you economize on money balances so you invest more,
- it reduces debt and thereby makes it easier to invest, it gives a
- signal that the economy is improving (which it may be for the
- reasons above or not) and so boosts consumer confidence. Moderate inflation has
- nearly always been associated with rising output.
-
- Of course, high inflation, or too variable an inflation rate, makes it
- impossible to judge the difference between real and nominal prices,
- and so the whole economy can go down the tubes. Anticipating this
- event also is disasterous.
-
- --
- "There is nothing in the marginal conditions that
- distinguish a mountain from a mole hill"
- Kenneth Boulding
-
- All comments are mine---(David Wright)
- david@cats.ucsc.edu.
-