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Comment by lupire | Hacker News Reader

Bold comment after 2 years of mailing out money to mass population of people who weren't working or running their businesses, resulting in 7% inflation.

Neither Kenyes nor Hayek were idiots. Yes giving money (even more than a govt actually has on hand -- printing) can stimulate labor by market-making to enable barter across space and time. And yes printing more money doesn't magically create more productivity forever.

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Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased 6.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today (March 3, 2022), as output increased 9.1 percent and hours worked increased 2.4 percent.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/prod2.pdf

Thanks, I really like these stats.

I wonder if inflation=7% and the absolute productivity through automation at 7% (9.2% - 2.1%) is a coincidence, just correlated or causal.

My guess based on a lot of armchair speculation is that inflation pegged to absolute productivity would result in the best possible economy. Maybe with a bit of a buffer just to be safe.

That’s a good idea. I think it still misses a needed link between productivity increases and increases to the lowest wages. Maybe loosely tying minimum wage to productivity?

Yeah, I am on board.

Could also be modeled in law as “$15 in 2022 and inflation adjusted for every year after”, where inflation as we said is pegged to absolute productivity.

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