Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Understanding the Roots and Causes of Inflation

In the United States, as well as in other countries, some people prefer to attribute the cause of inflation not to an increase in the quantity of money but, rather, to the rise in prices.

The situation is this: those people to whom the money comes first now have a higher income, and they can still buy many commodities and services at prices which correspond to the previous state of the market, to the condition that existed on the eve of inflation.

Having discussed various methods of getting the money by taxation, they finally decided that perhaps it was better to do it by inflation.

Today the techniques for inflation are complicated by the fact that there is checkbook money.

As the inflation continued, people thought it wiser to buy anything available, instead of keeping money in their pockets.

The masses had believed inflation money to be real money, but then they found out that conditions had changed.

One could say that in the United States today-and even in the past, under McKinley-the Republican party was more or less in favor of sound money and of the gold standard, and the Democratic party was in favor of inflation, of course not a paper inflation, but a silver inflation.

https://mises.org/wire/understanding-roots-and-causes-inflation 

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