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Inflation erased U.S. income gains last year

(www.wsj.com)
177 points JumpCrisscross | 2 comments | 09 Sep 25 19:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.004s | source
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argentinian ◴[09 Sep 25 22:18 UTC] No.45190101[source]▶
Do people in the U.S. have a good understanding of the causes of inflation?
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dennis_jeeves2 ◴[09 Sep 25 22:31 UTC] No.45190271[source]▶
No.

To me the answer is very simple, the primary (not sole) driver is govt printing currency indiscriminately.

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throwawaymaths ◴[09 Sep 25 22:41 UTC] No.45190393[source]▶
It's more complicated than that (lending also increases the money supply) though you're right that "printing money" loosely speaking is the primary irreversible driver.
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1. orwin ◴[09 Sep 25 23:04 UTC] No.45190670[source]▶
Depends on the default rate, and I'm pretty sure the past year in the US, default created more money than what was printed (even taking QE into account).

Basically why everybody decided to go with money printing during COVID btw, people realised in 2008 that a 2B default is the equivalent to printing 2B, so if that's the case, why not print money instead (that's a bad calculation imho, in my opinion in a capitalist market economy you need defaults for the market to work, and I would say, you need defaults that pierce the corporate veil).

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2. throwawaymaths ◴[10 Sep 25 13:35 UTC] No.45197434[source]▶
lending increases the money supply and amortizing and default decrease.