Our government didn't have the ability to print money? What if going to war meant raising taxes?
We took the control of the money supply out of their hands and instead used free and open source software to create money and move it around?
Our economy wasn't predicated on a target 2-3% inflation rate? What if you were not incentivized to spend your money because it's just losing value every day you don't spend it? How might our consumption/production patterns change? How might that impact sustainability?
The government couldn't move money from the 99% to the 1% every time a bank needed to be bailed out? What if they didn't print away all the value of money you earned? What if when the economy grew, the value of your money increased just as it would naturally if somebody wasn't printing away the difference?

How might the world look different?

[–] pingveno@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Small but steady inflation is good. The macroeconomic fear is that people will just hold onto their money in the form of raw currency. That's bad. Currency is for a more convenient representation of value. I can't compensate a roofer in computer code, so currency is a stand-in. But it also shouldn't languish or else the economy stagnates. The world used to regularly experience zero inflation or deflation, which hurt the economy. As much as we've had some instability lately, things are nowhere near as bad as they could be.

Of course the flip side - hyperinflation - is also bad, but that's not what we're talking about here.

[–] Johanno@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ok ok ok. Now explain to me: if inflation is supposed to ensure people don't horde money/value

How is it possible that Jeff Besos hords the income of a country?

Yes his value is bound in shares and stuff but still he is holding 185 Billion $ of value to his person.

In comparison to see how much money that is look at this website :

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

It seems that at a certain point of wealth the rules don't apply anymore.

[–] pingveno@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

He is putting that wealth to work by keeping it invested in his company instead of stuffing it under his mattress. That's exactly how it's supposed to work. That wealth is doing work for him and for the rest of the economy in the form of Amazon stock (setting aside various ethical qualms about Amazon). Stock is nothing more than an abstract representation of a slice of a company to allow for distributed ownership and for companies to raise capital. So instead of purchasing goods and services from a company, a shareholder provides raw capital to exchange for a slice of the company. That would make sense for a wealthier person who can only buy so many yachts and massages (goods and services), but it applies equally well to someone who is trying to sock some money away for retirement and have it grow over time.

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