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Comment by it_citizen | Hacker News Reader

Except that it is not that simple and that a lot of things that people are taught in ECON101 is wrong, oversimplified to a fault, or biased by an ideology or another.

Assuming that printing money automatically leads to inflation is assuming a lot of things such as all actors constantly making decisions based on the total supply of money, factories running at 100% of their capacity, the money being reinjected into the real economy and a ton of other over simplifications.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no serious work proving the existence of a direct cause-effect relationship between money printing and inflation in the real world. (Using historical data instead of an oversimplified model)

Actually, the euro zone increased its money supply by 5 since the 2000s, prices have only been multiplied by 1,4.

Hyperinflation is a different story, but those things are not caused by printing a few trillions.

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The concept is called velocity of money/circulation. It's actually taught in econ 101. It's distinct from money supply. For example you can have increasing supply and stable/declining velocity if no one is circulating it, so there being more money doesn't necessarily mean inflation in those conditions.

It boggles me how there can _not_ be a cause-effect between printing money and inflation.

Is it linear? No.

Is it the only possible cause? No.

Is it a cause? I think the obvious answer is yes, but obvious answers have been wrong before.

Low interest rates imply that everyone and their dog are saving money and don't give a damn about what the central banks are doing.

The money printed is not going to you. The sort of person that benefitted from the over-abundance of cheap money isn't exactly the sort that's waiting on a $1000 windfall to buy steak and upgrade their TV.

Look at the stock market and real estate and tell me there's no link between the money printing and inflation.

Mostly because what people refer to as "printing money" isn't really printing money, but more of a "reversible exchange of one class of assets for another class of assets of equal value". The central banks are not allowed to just create new money to give everyone working there a huge bonus, it always has to be swapped for a credible promise of future repayment. Banks take it up, since the rates are/were at near 0%, but people/businesses are not confident about their future money flows to take on new loans. Hence the new money just sits at banks and never reaches the real economy.

Helicopter money (1) does cause inflation, but the reason that the inflation has been stubbornly low for a decade is precisely because the central banks are forbidden from doing helicopter money

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_money

>"printing money" isn't really printing money, but more of a "reversible exchange of one class of assets for another class of assets of equal value"

When was the last time the Federal Reserve balance sheet went down? [0] And if it's of equal value, why doesn't someone want to buy it from them?

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL

Printing more money basically means that people (institutions) closer to the source of money get it cheaper and that effect compounds nastily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantillon_Effect

Is this taking into account the fact that more countries use euro as a currency? Or is this x5 because 50% of that is from there being more countries in eurozone?

The countries that joined since 2000 are not exactly large economies compared to all the giants (in comparison) already with the Euro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_the_eurozone#Hi...

And there was high inflation since they started the QE. At least in the financial markets. It might not count for the government's inflation metrics but I don't think those make sense.

This is not complicated.

Giving people money not to work results in more money and less production. But there's a bunch of people with money, so demand is higher than it'd otherwise be.

So according to this food prices increase because people buy (and eat) more food. With many Americans already overweight...

In any case, do you have any proof that more food is bought? I'm having a hard time believing this, unless people were lacking food previously.

If they didn't spend that money on food, how did those prices increase? Which parts of the stuff that goes into food increased? Links to actual data is severely missing from all the assertions made here. A moderate one-time stimulus check is responsible, really? Because all that other money that was created was not given to many people and I would like to see some data if you want to claim it ended up with them anyway by now. General wide-spread wage increases of according size, for example.

It's the whole economy. Labor costs are up. This drives labor costs in food production/transport/retail up (or else workers will switch jobs). Hence food prices. And demand remaining high is what keeps labor costs up.

So, food prices can go up and down even if food-specific demand is inelastic (that is, even if people eat the same amount and quality of food regardless of price).

FWIW I've found my food demand not to be 100% inelastic -- I have changed where I get fast food as a result of some price increases, and I've found that in times when I'm not making a steady income, I find it easier to maintain or lose weight.

This is a supply problem.

We have supply chains disorganized because COVID, bad crops and, specially, crazy energy prices (that affect everything).

How could prices not go up?

Not to forget that good amount of things like produce was destroyed as supply chain wasn't handling it anymore. It should be clear that just that alone would result in increase of prices as the food need to be replaced with something else. As supply-demand is at least somewhat balanced. Remove from supply side do to supply chain not accepting it, the demand overall is constant, prices go up.

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