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Comment by coryfklein | Hacker News Reader

This is oddly reflective of the elitism that cost the DNC it's victory. "Well actually, my poor man, a tomato is a fruit and every PhD economist knows that inflation is connected to fiscal policy's influence on the monetary supply"

The every day person uses the culinary definition of tomato, and inflation means that those tomatoes cost more at Walmart.

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I would expect a botanist to know that a tomato is technically a berry, just like I would expect an economist to know that inflation is technically defined as an increase in the money supply.

Everyday people can use whatever definition they want. That doesn't mean economists, the Fed, etc should say "inflation" when they mean "price of goods".

The tomato price is too damn high!

Get it yet?

This exchange is like a microcosm of the educated elite trying to talk to ordinary people.

This comment made my day.

Inflation is technically defined as an increase in the price level. You'll find the term defined in this way in every single economics textbook.

Entry level textbooks. It's one of those things they intentionally teach wrong to first year students in an attempt to "simplify"

No, it's not an attempt to simplify. Advanced textbooks define it in the same way.

Do you have a source? I've only ever seen it defined the traditional way. Besides, you can increase the money supply and not get inflation (defined the usual way). Inflation happens when the money supply increases more than the economy needs.

Inflation happens when money supply increases more than the value of the goods that you can purchase with that money supply. It isn't about needs, but things that can be bought, especially those with limited supplies like housing.

So if money supply stayed the same but a crisis reduced the supply of goods, while demand increased, then those raising prices are ... not inflation?

Say Price = Money supply / value of goods

If price goes up then inflation, if price goes down then deflation. If value of good goes down and money supply stays the same, inflation.

That definition depends on where you look, and when the definition was written. Between the roman empire and the mid 1900s inflation always referred to an increase in the money supply.

No, it didn't.

Bro, it's 2024.

Matter-of-fact discussion of the economy didn't cause people to vote for a serial sex offender promising to execute his political rivals and purge America of immigrants. The messaging could be better but don't gaslight us. Something is very wrong with the calculus being used by a great number of Americans.

I think it is actually 3 things, but you can't do much about two of them:

-1/3 economic/voters: we need better/different economics/policy

-1/3 cultists/far right christians/nationalists: trump is how we finally rise to power/right the nation

-1/3 lolz/nihilists: i hate everything; burn it all down

2 and 3 are the same group. Accelerationists and white Christian nationalists are just rebranded white nationalists, so there is nothing surprising there. Hard to say what the distribution of purely economic voters is given how illogical that is. I'm hesitant to believe the excuses people have given how extreme of the rest of the campaign was and its parallels to a particular historical figure, going to the point of nearly plagiarizing quotes from the man.

> vote for a serial sex offender promising to execute his political rivals and purge America of immigrants

> Something is very wrong with the calculus being used by a great number of Americans

I'm sure a lot of people, especially independents who could have swung either way, voted for Trump precisely because they were sick of this attitude.

People are free to make partisan judgments against Trump or any other politician, but they will also suffer electoral consequences if those judgments are for the most part fact-free, as in your case.

You can repeat that quip three times in the mirror and it still won't change how plainly ugly his campaign and personal actions have been. Nor have you served me, nor liberals in general, any consequences that won't also impact Trump's base to an equal or greater extent.

Yeah, so instead they voted for the guy who printed the money. That'll show the DNC!

Both parties have been printing money since Clinton was in office. I don't really see debt or inflation as a problem of one party.

Didn't Clinton basically balance the budget by the end of his second term?

Yes he did. I've heard interesting arguments that they did some clever accounting to hide a small deficit on the books somehow, but I didn't quite follow well enough to say for sure. That technicality aside, Clinton balanced the budget and every president since has apparently thought that was a terrible idea.

First, the Republicans have been running on a platform of pretend fiscal responsibility, and so deserve more criticism for the hypocrisy per their own standards. The Democrats have just been upfront about spending money.

Second, there's a huge difference between spending new money on specific policies for deliberate outcomes, and blindly dumping it into the financial sector to bid up the everything bubble as fuel for the Potemkin stock market and a handout to asset owners.

> and every PhD economist knows that inflation is connected to fiscal policy's influence on the monetary supply

Huh? I always thought this is common knowledge.

Well, for one thing, monetary policy is the primary determinant of money supply, not fiscal policy.

Second, I think it is fair to say that the causes of inflation are uncertain, even among mainstream PhD economists. The quantity theory hasn't been matching empirical data, and newer theories like the fiscal theory of the price level are gaining attention.

It's actually libertarian gibberish.

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