AngrySkillzz

> Sounds good.

Aight chief I'm out. Glad we have agreed that 25% unemployment is a good thing. You sure are concerned about those working class people trying to feed their families! I am in awe of your superior economic knowledge and humanitarian instincts. It is unfortunate that the people running the central banks are such rascals, rigging the economy for the benefit of the ultra-wealthy, when you could be doing their job instead.

it was a joke...

> It decreases the value of the money use to pay for them

That is meaningless, though. Imagine last year you bought some asset, that someone else did not, and it appreciated 2% with the price level. You are not any better off. I see you are implying that the other person "couldn't afford" to invest and kept their money in cash instead, to argue that the other person is worse off. That is also wrong - the issue here is holding cash, not the wealth disparity. Don't hold cash if you are worried about inflation. Mutual funds have low minimums, and you can buy fractional ETF shares at this point. You have no argument here.

"Low, stable inflation increases inequality" is not a statement that you could find much agreement on from economists.

Also, Krugman is just a pop-econ writer at this point. He is not a big deal in the economics profession. Yes, I am sure he understands how inflation and sticky wages interact. I am not so convinced that you understand it. Just going to repost my other comment for you to puzzle over:

"You are purposefully ignoring the normal explanation, which is this: because wages are sticky, firms that need to cut costs in a recession are more likely to lay off people than they are to give pay cuts. Inflation helps to weaken that rigidity so that job losses are not as large. Maybe you know that.

You claim that central banks depreciate the currency because they "think wages among the working class are too high." But rhetorically, you are doing more than just referring to the explanation I gave above. You are implying that central banks "think" working class wages are too high, and want to lower them to hurt working class people.

Which is the opposite of the standard explanation - the purpose of inflation in that instance is to implicitly reduce the downward rigidity of wages so that employment does not contract as much in a downturn.

Presumably you, champion of the working class, would rather more people be unemployed?"

> people who benefit most have both assets and debt. These are wealthy people

Generally you have to have more assets than debt to be considered "wealthy." This is why the word "net" is important in the parent comment. And you are completely ignoring the second-order effects, which is that an economy with low, stable inflation is good for everyone. And if you are going to quibble "why is low, stable inflation good for everyone," then look at the deflationary spirals of the great depression (or any pre-1900 crash) and any hyperinflationary economy of your choosing.

> If demand decreases then production should decrease

Okay Chairman, have it your way. COVID hits, demand plummets, we do nothing to try to keep people in jobs or keep the financial system from collapsing. Less production is indicated!

> buggy whips

This is a total red herring and you know it. No one is talking about counter-cyclical monetary policy and implying it is being used to keep anachronistic firms in business.

You are purposefully ignoring the normal explanation, which is this: because wages are sticky, firms that need to cut costs in a recession are more likely to lay off people than they are to give pay cuts. Inflation helps to weaken that rigidity so that job losses are not as large. Maybe you know that.

You claim that central banks depreciate the currency because they "think wages among the working class are too high." But rhetorically, you are doing more than just referring to the explanation I gave above. You are implying that central banks "think" working class wages are too high, and want to lower them to hurt working class people.

Which is the opposite of the standard explanation - the purpose of inflation in that instance is to implicitly reduce the downward rigidity of wages so that employment does not contract as much in a downturn.

Presumably you, champion of the working class, would rather more people be unemployed?

Thanks, I am glad someone else actually has the energy to explain this.

> Depreciating currency causes those assets to go up in nominal terms

That does not increase the real value of those assets, and it does not have any distributional consequences.

> Thats a theory-laden and motivated explanation

You could go read like, any of the vast literature on the great depression, the things that caused it and the things that made it worse. But you'd rather expose your ignorance on the Internet for us to see.

> discover that the central bank is very much fact and not at all theory.

I happen to know a lot about central banking, actually. You might be pulling a Dunning-Kruger on this one.

It is strange, but I think it makes sense culturally. HN grew out of that particular libertarian, anti-establishment "hacker" subculture, where it is very common to believe that the government and etc. is out to screw you. Rather than like, the government is also made up of people, the same kind of smart, educated people that might otherwise have worked at your startup, and the reason most of them chose to go into government is because they think that problems like macroeconomics and public finance and etc. are interesting.

But no, us tech dweebs are the righteous little guys fighting back against the rigged system, man!

> Only because the wealthy benefit from depreciating currency

Source this claim. Everyone benefits from a depreciating currency because inflation provides a buffer against deflationary spirals that lead to large recessions and job losses for people of all classes. Tell me exactly how inflation benefits only the ultra-wealthy and not anyone else.

> because the oligarchs want workers’ wages to go down.

I would suggest that you clarify this claim so it does not sound so much like a conspiracy theory.