yottabit
Golden Member
- Jun 5, 2008
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The problem is inflation incentivizes consumer spending. It’s better to take out a loan or make a big purchase now before prices go up. Leaving money in your savings will cause it to be eroded. In low amounts it’s very healthy. In the extreme this loop can lead to runaway inflation and that’s why consumer sentiment and inflation expectations are important to keep it in check.It's natural to expect that if you have insane inflation for a time it's natural expect some price correction in the other way. "Deflation usually occurs in a sickly economy." doesn't mean ALWAYS just usually.
Yeah, obviously "price goes up is natural" and "price goes down is bad" is a concept that makes sense to many people. All of the explanations are "macro" economics. It's bad "for the economy" it's "bad for investors" - it's not always bad for the person who now needs to spend more money. If you had a huge spike in inflation, telling people that "inflation is solved" is meaningless for them, because you haven't solved anything - you just stopped things from getting worse faster.
I was talking more inline with taxes, rates (which comes from the fed, before you try to correct me for some reason) etc.
Many, I believe.
In general I agree that the economy isn't as bad as it's painted out to be, but I also think with regards to consumer spending that people are just used to having tons of debt these days. I also think that as housing has gone out of reach for many, money is just getting spent elsewhere (e.g. cars, traveling etc.) because they don't feel they have anything to invest/save for.
No doubt about that.
Deflation incentivizes everyone to sit on their assets. There’s no reason to make a huge purchase today when you expect it will be cheaper tomorrow. You can earn real returns by just letting your cash sit. There’s basically no amount of it that’s healthy. In the extreme, consumer spending will drop off a cliff and crash the economy to the next great depression. I’m not sure there are any tools federal reserve or other banks have to combat deflation. Hopefully you can see why deflation is much more dangerous than inflation for an economy and almost never occurs in healthy economies.
Aside from all of the above, how exactly would you compel companies to lower their prices? After the market has already proven the pricing that it can bear? It doesn’t sound very free market.