this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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Economy
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I am so sick of this canard being parroted incessantly that "deflation hurts the economy." But they never specify why, other than some nebulous bullshit about sales and consumption of stuff will slow down. So what they actually mean by that is that deflation hurts Wall Street and rich motherfuckers, neither of which are entities I as a private non-millionaire citizen actually give a flying fuck about.
Inflation has slowed, possibly, in that prices are rising more slowly and your dollar is being devalued a little less over time than it possibly was last year. But prices are going to remain as high as they are now or go higher, because reducing prices of goods would reduce corporate profits, and corporations have already determined that we will still (albeit possibly begrudgingly) pay the current prices for everything. Because we're all still doing it.
I’ve argued back and forth with my folks, random internet persons, and ChatGPT and consensus seems to be extreme inflation or deflation hurts the economy in different ways and mild of either is at about neutral.
Key word being "extreme." I don't think a return to roughly early 2019, pre-pandemic-clusterfuck levels will exactly set the world on fire.