New coronavirus in/from China

[vtsnowedin]

The price of Swedish log cabins notwithstanding inflation here in the US is around it's usual two percent per year. Covid has upped the price of food but gas has gone down and you can get deals on autos and at zero interest. I do expect a rise in rural housing prices as people flee the city but how much that will effect the value of the dollar remains to be seen.
I do recognize that printing stimulus money is inflationary but that has nothing to do with the rich getting richer by taking it from the poor.

[stumuz1]

The price of Swedish log cabins notwithstanding inflation here in the US is around it's usual two percent per year.

Ah yes the CPI or the CP LIE that most economists refer to it!

The basket of goods that determines how much inflation is going on.

In the US from the 1950's used to have a pound of choice sirloin or rib (can't remember) as a marker of inflation. When choice steak started shooting up in price, it was, umm, cough cough, look over there, replaced with chicken breast!!! Couldn't actually have a true inflation rate!

I do recognize that printing stimulus money is inflationary but that has nothing to do with the rich getting richer by taking it from the poor.

1% of the people own 50% of the equities.

Whichever way you cut it VT, Money printing is a mass transfer of wealth from poor too rich.

https://business.financialpost.com/inve ... -ownership

[stumuz1]

https://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2018 ... here-else/

My swedish log cabin. Real wood, from a real forest, driven on real roads. True inflation.

[vtsnowedin]

Whichever way you cut it VT, Money printing is a mass transfer of wealth from poor too rich.

Again you are falling for the wealth is a zero sum game fallacy. The rich creating new wealth does not diminish your wealth.

[stumuz1]

Whichever way you cut it VT, Money printing is a mass transfer of wealth from poor too rich.

Again you are falling for the wealth is a zero sum game fallacy. The rich creating new wealth does not diminish your wealth.

Again, what is this new wealth created by debasing the currency you speak of?

[Little John]

The price of Swedish log cabins notwithstanding inflation here in the US is around it's usual two percent per year. Covid has upped the price of food but gas has gone down and you can get deals on autos and at zero interest. I do expect a rise in rural housing prices as people flee the city but how much that will effect the value of the dollar remains to be seen.
I do recognize that printing stimulus money is inflationary but that has nothing to do with the rich getting richer by taking it from the poor.

Yes it does.

If most of your exchange value is in physical assets, it matters not a jot what happens to the exchange value of money, since the monetary exchange value of your assets will, all other things being equal, adjust to account for that.

If, on the other hand, all of your exchange value is in money and, even worse, in the money you need to earn each and every month just to pay your way in the world, what happens to the exchange value of that money is incredibly important.

Inflating the supply of money, either via printing or its electronic functional equivalent, in the absence of an economic demand for that money, will drive down its exchange value. And the poor will, as a consequence, become poorer. In turn, meaning the rich become, relatively speaking, richer.

[vtsnowedin]

Whichever way you cut it VT, Money printing is a mass transfer of wealth from poor too rich.

Again you are falling for the wealth is a zero sum game fallacy. The rich creating new wealth does not diminish your wealth.

Again, what is this new wealth created by debasing the currency you speak of?

I never said that.
Debasing currency diminishes government as well as private debt but does not create wealth. The discussion was about wealth being a zero sum game which you can't seem to understand.
An inventor invents a new product, combines capital , labor , and materials to produce it, sells it to us and gains wealth while you gain the utility of the product. Nobody lost any wealth and the total wealth in the world increased. An increase is not zero. Got it?

[Little John]

Again you are falling for the wealth is a zero sum game fallacy. The rich creating new wealth does not diminish your wealth.

Again, what is this new wealth created by debasing the currency you speak of?

I never said that.
Debasing currency diminishes government as well as private debt but does not create wealth. The discussion was about wealth being a zero sum game which you can't seem to understand.
An inventor invents a new product, combines capital , labor , and materials to produce it, sells it to us and gains wealth while you gain the utility of the product. Nobody lost any wealth and the total wealth in the world increased. An increase is not zero. Got it?

Printing money does not increase wealth at the systemic level. But, it does systemically redistribute it upwards into the hands of those people whose existing wealth is primarily in the form of physical assets.

In other words, the already very rich.

[kenneal - lagger]

I read somewhere a while ago that the US stock market had increased in value almost exactly the amount of the Fed financial stimulus since 2007. Meanwhile the price to earnings ratio of the stocks involved has dropped as the companies involved had not increased earnings. Their earnings cannot support their current stock market value. The increase in value of the stock market since 2007 is a Ponzi scheme which will eventually crash as the true value of the stocks is revealed.

So the rich have taken the stimulus money and, instead of investing it in VT's supposed new products and production, "invested" it in the stock market to boost their paper wealth. They have inflated their worth and in the meantime deflated everyone else's.

And a 2% inflation rate means that the value of money reduces to half every thirty five years. 1$ in 1985 would only be worth 50c now at 2% inflation. Who salary has more than doubled in that time (not including promotions) to make them richer?

[kenneal - lagger]

Regarding governments printing money, if a government was to print some money to invest in say a National Insulation Scheme, paying for people to have their houses insulated, and then eventually taxing the money back by taking some of the savings on heating bills and destroying that money, repaying its loan to itself, that printing of money would not be inflationary. The country would start and finish with the same amount of money but that money would have flowed through the economy in the meantime and done some good and left behind an asset which allows people to spend more of their income on things other than energy.

Printing money is not always inflationary. It depends on what the money is used for.

[stumuz1]

I never said that.

I think you did!

Wealth is not a zero sum game where the wealthy and powerful extract wealth from you to add to their pile.

They do when they take away your ability to purchase actual necessaries with your debased currency.

Debasing currency diminishes government as well as private debt but does not create wealth. The discussion was about wealth being a zero sum game which you can't seem to understand.

We will decide whether i understand at the end of the debate

An inventor invents a new product, combines capital , labor , and materials to produce it, sells it to us and gains wealth while you gain the utility of the product.

No. In the context of this discussion you had ten(2015) dollars to buy this new invention. You cannot afford to buy this new invention because you only have ten 2020 dollars. Get it? You future wealth has been stolen from you, but it was done so insidiously, 99.8% of the public never saw it.

Nobody lost any wealth and the total wealth in the world increased. An increase is not zero. Got it?

Except you. Your ability to buy new inventions has diminished. If there are lots of people like you, it will not be worth inventing new stuff, because there is no market.

Result? Nett decrease in wealth. Simples.

[stumuz1]

Printing money is not always inflationary. It depends on what the money is used for.

Correct.

Printing money to give to CEO's to buy their own shares is fraud. Pure and simple.

[vtsnowedin]

Who salary has more than doubled in that time (not including promotions) to make them richer?

I took a government job in late 1975 at $4.20/hr. My inflation calculator app says that position should now pay $19.67/ hr. while the states website says it pays $17.15. The reason the state has never kept up fully with inflation is the soaring cost of employee health and dental insurance so if the wealthy are getting the wealth of the technician it is the rich doctors and insurance company executives.
My own rate today when I do work is $35/hr.

[vtsnowedin]

Except you. Your ability to buy new inventions has diminished. If there are lots of people like you, it will not be worth inventing new stuff, because there is no market.

Result? Nett decrease in wealth. Simples.

And yet my home is full of things that did not exist in their current form in 1975. cell phones computers cd players,LED light, washing machine that senses load size, flat screen TV, air conditioner, and a pharmacy worth of health saving drugs, all brought home in 4x4 vehicles that last 200,000 miles. All bought and paid for with my diminished wealth.
Microsoft's shares are only worth $188/share because we impoverished masses keep buying those products that did not exist in 1975.

[Lord Beria3]

https://paularbair.wordpress.com/2020/0 ... ilization/

Interesting essay on Covid and our industrial civilization.