Comments by "Kristopher Driver" (@paxdriver) on "" video.

  1. Great job, my 2 cents: The inflation target itself is the problem. There's no reason businesses can't grow by saving and being productive, the idea of living on the brim of a bubble as "optimal" discourages productivity, encourages speculation and risk, and we all pay the price for that in cycles. Everyone would have equal opportunity if everyone could save because prices weren't inflated. If everyone could own a home and homes weren't primary investments then people could save and invest for themselves instead - they'd be investing in stocks, which would be productive companies (see point A). It is penny wise and pound foolish to chase an inflation target because demographics and timing of new money in circulation matters more to most people's spending power than nominal values increasing stochastically on some magical 3% targeted upward trend. Think about what we call saving money these days: buying in bulk when don't don't need so much. Companies growing even if the population shrinks or excess of your product creates healthcare costs. We encourage people to save money by over extending themselves on student loans and housing, the throw tax breaks and incentives to landlords and developers to increase the overpriced housing stock. It's so absurd and plain as day that the idea of inflation itself is the problem. It makes everybody precisely 3% poorer, causes higher consumption, and creates ridiculous talking points like "consumer spending went up! Great news!" 3 days after consumer debt levels have risen high enough to announce public warnings, and advise everyone to save when the system is designed to pressure them to spend sooner than they need to, in order to save money. The entire system has gotten so complex and inefficient by chasing inflation without any sign that it creates broad prosperity or shrinks the income gap or wealth of the population. It only serves a tiny few who benefit from first access, from arbitrage opportunity, and outsized rémunération for the most unproductive commercial activity known to the species. Debt would all be short term and available if savings weren't eroded by engineering the loss of purchasing power. It's absurd by any real value metric to pretend that inflation is necessary lest people live their whole lives without spending just because they weren't being coerced to do so. People will still buy things, they'll just buy what they need instead of excess and they'll need less help when they fall on bad times because they'll have had the opportunity to build a cushion. Not everybody will save, but right now people don't even have the choice to save. Transaction fees are fixed so they disproportionately extract from smaller contributions. Expensive necessities aren't even counted as inflation as they balloon. Subsidies get funnelled to dividends which are preferred tax status over hourly wage earners and nobody can say doing nothing but having wealth is more productive than the worker working overtime to make that revenue for the dividend. It's so frustrating how hard it is to explain to people all the many ways engineering inflation on purpose is juking stats to make countries or companies or politicians market their success, but when the metric becomes the target it ceases to be a good metric. This should be econ 101 but nobody seems to be able to draw that parallel despite having no evidence anywhere that refutes it.
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