I think you’ve got some legitimate concerns there, but a lot of what you say doesn’t make much sense to me. Mortgages in their entirety aren’t part of CPI because mortgages are an investment with a return. They’re not a consumed good, you still have your house after you’ve paid it off, although some CPI calculations separate or rent or a rental component of mortgages. Of course it can be included in overall household spending, and changes in household mortgage payments are an important economic indicator but CPI is a specific thing with a specific meaning.

Printing money by itself is not ok, it matters an awful lot what is done with it. Your argument is classic “if it’s ok to do this thing in specific circumstances to solve a particular problem, why not do it all the time for everything as much as possible”. Kind of weird argument, what can I say except, er, no.

You’re quite right the cost for producing goods is falling and stable prices just mean our money is falling in value, it just doesn’t seem that way because these effects cancel out. The article is making the exact same argument.

I think where were likely to agree is that if we’re going to rescue financial markets and corporations in hard times, why not also help ordinary people? If corporate welfare is ok, how come personal welfare isn’t? In some situations like an economic collapse or like Coronavirus deficit spending is essential, I don’t buy your skepticism of that, but I do think it needs to be more equitably deployed. By and large this is what actually happened this time around with wage support here in the UK and direct payments to households in the US. There are arguments to be had about the level and Lana e of this kind of spending, but I think they’re both needed to at least some degree.

The article is about the UK though and I’m a Brit and we do have a fairly well developed social welfare system compared to the US and many aspects of it such as the NHS are much less controversial than in the US. This comes from our experiences in the world wars when the entire country was expected to come together for a common cause. It became untenable after that to throw people out on the street with no support and just say “Thanks for the help, see you in 20 years for the next world war. Until then you’re on your own.” It was also about national security. Far too many people were unfit for national service due to malnutrition and disease. Ensuring a fit healthy population became essential to our military preparedness.