makeasnek

Agreed workers need to unionize but your first paragraph is preposterous.

This works because people consider their own labor to have a fixed value.

No they don't. Do they not choose to apply to one place over the other? Scrutinize the benefits they offer, the location, the pay? Do they not make "lateral moves" to increase their wages? Do they not expect to make more as they gain more experience and knowledge? Do employers not generally pay "senior" employees more than new ones? Plenty of workers realize their labor does not have a fixed value.

The idea that only a special class of people can negotiate on their behalf is reductive and dis-empowering. Workers are capable of negotiating individually and as a union. And if my working conditions suck, and my union sucks at bargaining, I'll go find a job elsewhere or consider joining a different union.

No, I specifically pointed out he was not the president during the great depression.

From your link:

The government held the $35 per ounce price until August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, thus completely abandoning the gold standard

I'm saying Nixon took the USD off the gold standard and changed the USD to an inflationary currency (and effectively ended Bretton Woods) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock

Agree that wealth hoarding is a key issue we need to address as a society.

Imagine instead if we had a gold standard. And the rich could both hoard money and watch it go up in value by doing so.

1. That's what taxes and other methods of wealth distribution are for.
2. There is an opportunity cost. By your argument, rich people would just hoard gold and put all their money into gold. We're not on the gold standard currently but nothing's stopping them from buying into precious metals. But there are better ways to make money. If you own 1oz of gold today and you own 1oz of gold 30 years later, whatever the "price" of gold is, the value has remained exactly the same: it's 1oz of gold.

If I bought one unit of Apple stock, if the USD loses value, it doesn't effect the value of my apple stock. It now takes more dollars to buy an Apple share, but my Apple share is still 1/100 of Apple. Currency devaluing makes it look like I'm making money because the share price rose, but I'm not. To be fair, I'm making money but the total value has not changed. I can trade that Apple share for more dollars now, but I probably can't trade it for more bread or other "assets".

If the currency loses 8% of its value, one would expect the share of Apple stock to cost 8% more currency. So if my "return on investment" is 4% but the currency is worth 8% less, that means Apple's value has changed in addition to inflation happening. My stock lost value there. Not due to inflation, but due to Apple being valued less by the market for some unknown reason.

The impact is still disproportionate. While I lost 4% in your example, a pleb holding cash lost 8%. And plebs have a greater share of their net wealth in cash.

If I take out a $10,000 loan, which for simplicity's sake let's say is worth 10,000 loaves of bread, and next year, when payment is due, $10,000 is "worth half as much" ie I can only buy 5,000 loaves of bread with it, I only have to pay back "half the loan". I still pay the same $10k, but at the time I paid it back, I only had to trade half as much bread (my storage asset of choice) for it.

Increasing the money supply, all other things equal, decreases the value of the currency. It's that simple. The price, or value of the currency is the net of supply and demand for that currency. Same demand, higher supply, lower value per unit.

This link argues inflation is more complicated than that, which I agree with in my opening sentence, inflation has many causes. Of course it's more complicated than that. But that doesn't change the underlying basic reality that inflating the supply on its own reduces the value of the money. Supply and demand is simple, unpacking which % of the 10% inflation experienced in an economy is caused by money printing or push-pull or supply chain disruptions is a more complex and possibly impossible to fully answer question. The complexity of answering that question is a good argument for why we shouldn't give central banks the ability to change the money supply or interest rates, as they cannot have the information required to know whether raising interest rates will fix inflation because they can't even know for sure what is even causing it. I mean, inflating the currency supply is certainly a part of it, but picking apart the other pieces is when it enters that grey area of unknowability.

Inflation is caused by inflationary currency. Any other inflation caused by supply chain issues, corporate greed, lack of market competition, etc is just added on top of that. Fiat inflationary currency is a rather new invention in terms of the human timeline. They aim for 2-3% inflation in “good years”. Central banks are not to be trusted.

Think of it: in the last 50 years, everything has gotten cheaper to produce thanks to increasing mechanization, outsourcing to cheap labor/low regulation countries, and extremely efficient supply chains. Yet so many things “costs more” than it did 50 years ago. Even basics like bread. How is that the case? Shouldn’t it cost less? Where is that “extra efficiency” going if not to lower prices? The answer: bread is the same value it’s always been, the money has gotten less valuable. This is how they keep working class people running on a treadmill, never able to achieve economic mobility.

Inflationary currency devalues the currency you worked hard to earn by increasing the supply. It hits the middle class the worst because they have more of their net wealth in cash, often in the form of emergency funds, savings, and putting together enough money for a down payment on a home. Rich people have their money in assets which aren’t harmed by currency inflation. Poor people live hand to mouth. If you want to identify the causes of increasing wealth disparity, the inability of people to save money is a major one.

You can't save if your currency is constantly losing value. Putting money in a savings account is just slowly moving value from you to whoever controls the money printer and expands the supply.

Inflation is caused by inflationary currency. Any other inflation caused by supply chain issues, corporate greed, lack of market competition, etc is just added on top of that. Fiat inflationary currency is a rather new invention in terms of the human timeline. They aim for 2-3% inflation in "good years". Central banks are not to be trusted.

Think of it: in the last 50 years, everything has gotten cheaper to produce thanks to increasing mechanization, outsourcing to cheap labor/low regulation countries, and extremely efficient supply chains. Yet so many things "costs more" than it did 50 years ago. Even basics like bread. How is that the case? Shouldn't it cost less? Where is that "extra efficiency" going if not to lower prices? The answer: bread is the same value it's always been, the money has gotten less valuable. This is how they keep working class people running on a treadmill, never able to achieve economic mobility.

Inflationary currency devalues the currency you worked hard to earn by increasing the supply. It hits the middle class the worst because they have more of their net wealth in cash, often in the form of emergency funds, savings, and putting together enough money for a down payment on a home. Rich people have their money in assets which aren't harmed by currency inflation. Poor people live hand to mouth. If you want to identify the causes of increasing wealth disparity, the inability of people to save money is a major one.

I'm glad to finally see this cockroach serve time for something but it unnerves me a bit that his something is ignoring a congressional subponea. We are given the fifth for a reason, I remember when this exact same subpoena power was directed against suspected communists during the red scare. And when republicans have used it in their numerous BS "house investigations" into everything from Fauci to Hunter's laptop. Some of those lib subponea recipients rightfully told them to kick rocks because the investigations were stupid.

And when grand juries (a different kind of subponea power) have been used as fishing expeditions to disrupt activist groups, or target Wikileaks. Pushing a world where you can be forced to testify to the government is questionable imo. Giving people immunity and forcing them to testify isn't a great solution either, as that information can still be used to further tyranny even if you cannot personally be charged with what you say. Our ability to refuse to cooperate is an important check on tyrrany, that's why we have the 5th in the first place.