The Financial Page: In Praise Of Inflation

In Praise of Inflation

The Financial Page is a regular feature in The New Yorker. I usually find it illuminating, sometimes troubling, but this week I found it irritating, which promoted me to write a letter to the editor, to wit:

Mr. Surowiecki gives "the people" too much credit. People are opposed to inflation, if they even know what the word means, because newspapers have been telling them it is evil for the last umpteen zillion years.

Inflation has been a fact of life as long as most people in this country have been alive. It goes up, it goes down, but it is continuous. One of the other things newspapers are constantly harping on (at least they used to, I haven't been listening lately) is the low savings rate for Americans. This is awful, the Japanese save much more money than we do. We should be more like the Japanese. Well, what's the point in saving any money if it is going to get eaten by inflation? Put your money in the bank and every year, if you are lucky, it only loses one or two percent of its' value. Shoot, in 50 years, it will be worth absolutely nothing. Only question is why would anyone open a savings account in the first place?

At the end he claims a purpose to the economy, which is akin to imparting a purpose to life. It may serve a function, which in turn may serve a purpose, but the economy does not exist to "maximize our well-being". It may serve that purpose, but it may serve any number of other purposes as well, such as maximizing the number of unemployed. Actually, I think the economy does have a purpose and that is to concentrate as much power into as few hands as possible. Only when we have one God-King and everyone else has been reduced to serfdom will this purpose have been fulfilled.

Cheers,

Charles Pergiel
Silicon Forest
www.pergelator.blogspot.com

If you try the links and they don't work, please let me know. They work for me, but who knows what's going on in the background. Maybe they know my IP address. Maybe they love me. Well, no, I'm pretty sure that's not it, but I think you get the drift.

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.