Ask Lemmy

I disagree. Inflation affects property (which probably refers to every tangible thing you will interact with other than the currency that is inflating). If the amount of money you need to give up in order to acquire an object increased due to time passing, that is "inflation". That means that when inflation happens, every person who has at least 1 dollar bill suffers (since they won't be able to trade it for as much stuff as they could before). A person who is significantly wealthier than someone else probably won't have a significantly larger amount of money. Elon Musk surely doesn't have 1 billion $1 bills stored in a basement: they probably have a large amount of money in their wallet and in a bank account, but I would be surprised if less than 90% of their net worth was derived from owning property. A "billionaire" might have 100 times as much "money" as the typical person, but they probably don't have 10,000 or 100,000 times as much: https://breznikar.com/articles/how-much-cash-on-hand-do-billionaires-have/1781 https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/average-net-worth-by-age This means that when there is inflation, a poor person's net worth will likely decline more than that of a rich person, since it's likely that a large amount of a poor person's net worth will be in the form of cash when compared to a rich person (and the net worth of a rich person will probably increase, since it's likely that the value of their property will increase more than the amount they lose from the value of their money going down). People who are older are usually wealthier than young people, and people who are wealthier probably derive a larger percentage of their net worth from owning property than someone who is less wealthy, so when inflation happens, the net worth of young people probably decreases more when compared to older people.

Some things that can offset the impact of inflation are having debt and/or income that increases when inflation happens. I intentionally mentioned that property is tangible, but income and an obligation to pay someone using money seem less tangible. If you only own a $100 bill in your pocket, but you have a debt of $100 and your household income is $80,610 each year, if prices double but your income doubles too, that means that your net worth would not really change (you still have $100 and owe $100), but it would be easier to pay your debt (since it would become a smaller proportion of your income). If your income increases faster than inflation does (which is technically a typical situation), that means that you are in a better position as time passes! Moreover, old people typically have less (earned) income and debt than younger people, so in some ways young people have an advantage over old people.

In general, getting more (earned) income and debt is probably the way to overtake someone older than you. Getting a job providing something that old people pay for (like gambling or medical services) is probably an even better way.