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Comment by an_opabinia | Hacker News Reader

We could probably 10x the number of “handouts” as you call them, at least in the US, and nothing would change. We’ve auditioned it already: $4T in stimulus, the $600/wk employment checks, etc. What negative negative impact really did that have on an average person’s day to day life? “Handouts” made pay rise for the first time in decades.

Even the landlords. I don’t know any landlords who are on the street because of the rent forbearance and eviction moratorium - and I don’t even agree with those policies.

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Rising inflation says otherwise. Worst effects may be yet to come.

The USA was a fine place to live, many people happily gainfully employed, many investment accounts booking gains, labor and capital coexisting in harmony, when inflation was double what it is now.

Inflation is bad for lenders (i.e. people keeping deposits in USD). People who work get paid based on their real value which means their pay rises if inflation rises. Of course it maybe difficult to get a raise for your current job but switching jobs will get you a raise that catches up to inflation.

Here is a chart: https://imgur.com/a/eOXF0UO

Note that there has been a shift in bargaining power since 1980 that is closing. That gap is not the result of inflation because inflation alone doesn't give employers bargaining power. If anything it increases bargaining power of employees vs the old job because the new job always pays more in nominal terms.

It's also incredibly bad for pensioners, and often there's a lag between cost of living increasing and wages increasing that can be quite painful until things equalize, which sometime never happen.

I think pensioners would be covered as “lenders”. I interpreted lenders to mean those who have savings or are the beneficiaries of savings, such as pensioners, in addition to the obvious meaning of entities that hold fixed-rate debt as an asset.

> switching jobs will get you a raise

If only that option were realistically available to all, rather than just an entitled few.

A remarkably large number of restaurants and similar employers have recently increased their wages due to demand. It’s not just the elite.

And a great deal of that inflation is due to supply chain issues from the pandemic so it wasn't really an ideal experiment.

Yes, I don't really get why this often gets dropped. I would assume inflation goes down next year if the supply chains get better again.

A lot of the inflation I saw in the pandemic was perishable products where the supply was cut in some way or another. As long as people that want it badly can afford more they'll pay more for it. This is inflation, but it's not clear whether the money supply or the supply chains are the reason. The money supply was high in the preceding years as well, not leading to such high inflation.

I don't understand if we can say this inflation isn't just the surge of people who didn't spend a lot on travel/eating out/etc. now splurging on all the things + constraints on goods like cars due to the pandemic causing supply chain issues. It seems to me to me a relatively temporary, same as how the April 2020 market dip didn't really mean anything come April 2021.

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