Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawaygh | Hacker News Reader

> Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, a function of money printing

Is it, though? Are hotels and used cars more expensive this year because of money printing?

It only is when the money printed is mailed directly to the public.

A decade ago the money printed was to restore bank cash reserves. The inflation had already happened (housing bubble) due to poor lending practices which caused the global financial crisis.

this is a reference to a famous Milton Friedman quote "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" — of course this is a tautology, but he didn't mean the trivial version when he said it, but rather he was making an empirical claim.

in this piece it looks like the author is making the tautological version of the claim, by following up and describing it as "a function of money printing" — which is obviously true it is a function of money printing and several other things

To be clear, inflation is not a function of money printing. For example, under metallic standards (so no money printing), countries would experience inflation or deflation as a result of trade imbalances (because a trade deficit leads to a net outflow of precious metals, and vice-versa).

metallic standards often had debasement (that's why it's called debasement). but also no one is arguing that inflation is a function of ONLY money printing, but no one can argue that money printing is not one of the inputs that determines inflation

Indeed! If somebody was able to print a trillion dollars and stash it away in their bank account, I don't see why any observable inflation would occur.

Inflation is actually money supply times velocity of money. In your example the velocity would be zero, so no inflation.

inflation is a function of peoples willingness to use todays cash for tomorrows utility.

this money machine goes brrrr reality is a poor mans understanding of central bank financing and is mostly a paranoia fueling cryptocurrency speculation.

there is a need for more transparency in inflation numbers, but really, you have to be paranoid of governments numbers to think they arnt sufficiently independent.

"Inflation is a monetary phenomenon" is a quote from economist Milton Friedman but most economists disagree.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com