this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
246 points (95.9% liked)

Australia

3620 readers
69 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @[email protected] who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @[email protected] and @[email protected]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Non-paywall link.

TL;DR: economists are still stuck in the idea of the market as a perfect force for reaching optimal outcomes. They're ignoring the simple fact that businesses are putting prices up purely to increase profits. And that they can do this because the economic ideal of perfect competition (where many small firms compete with near-identical products) does not exist. We have a small number of very powerful businesses—oligopolies—in nearly every market for consumer-facing goods.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm not saying I disagree or agree, but I've heard a lot of friends and colleagues start to decry inflation as simply a tool of the government. I haven't heard this argument so often before. Am I missing new data or a political trend? I'm not huge in social media or TV news FYI.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You're missing basic knowledge, not new data or a political trend. If you live in the western world, you should know everything is about debt and inflation. How can college cost 75k a year? Access to debt. How could people but housed after 1975? Access to debt, how can people afford health care? Access to debt. Every time a large portion of society gets ahead of the curve, there needs to be price increases to increase the debt. That's it. That's everything in the US and many western countries. The debt has to be increased. That is where the wealthy make the most profit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Government spend much money. Much money come from tax and borrowing. Let's pretend there's $100 in the economy. Gov't takes 10% in tax. They spend $10, and the rest of the people share $90.

When next year comes, the economy grew to $110 and the government Collect $11 in tax, but actually decide to spend $20. Meaning they borrowed $9.

Year 3, economy grows to $150. Government gets $15 in tax, everyone feels "richer", but government has to borrow to pay the $9 on last year, plus whatever new spending this year. Let's say gov't now owes $50.

So the next year! They create inflation and everyone has lots of money but can't afford shit. Maybe economy balloons to stupidity like $500. Government takes $50, and pays off their debt. Or could.

In in this way, over time, inflation helps reduce the massive debt load incurred by governments because $1 is a lot easier to get in 2023 than it was in 2019.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Your analysis would be true if many people's economies who weren't running up debt vs GDP were doing just fine. They are not. Countries with the same relative debt are way worse off lately.