[newacct583]

We would not be "in the Cater [sic] Years" regardless. The lowest inflation reported in the late 70's was about 5%, with a peak at 15%. Last year's post-covid number was 5.4%.

Your point seems mostly like demagoguery. I think the more interesting question is... is 5% actually bad? There's a real argument to be had here that rapid inflation reflects genuine improvements like rising wage levels and that it's worth paying for. Remember that the "biggest losers" in inflationary economies are people who hold assets, not investors (whose returns accomadate faster than things like loan terms) or wage workers (who don't have significant assets to depreciate and whose wages track inflation well).

[Spooky23]

Exactly. As a well to do tech person, the impact of 10% inflation is nil when my retirement funds returned 25%.

Now if I was some über rich dude with millions of capital tied up high friction investments, forced to choose between paying capital gains taxes or losing to inflation, i may feel differently.

Frankly, we need to put shitty businesses that exist by virtue of low interest rates out of business. It should not be feasible to buy thousands of single family homes as investment property, for example.

[mc32]

It's the poor who this hits most. Most tech workers can 'absorb' this. We may get raises, bonuses, etc., to make up the diff.

But your average Joe and Jill in the world working restaurants or deliveries, they can't just shrug it off.

[medvezhenok]

Note that how we calculate inflation has actually changed since the Carter Years - most importantly the substitution of housing in the inflation basket with OER (owner-equivalent rent).

If we had the previous inflation measure (same as 1970s), CPI would be closer to double digits now (because of housing appreciation over the last year).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inflation-numbers-1970s-cpi-hou...

[newacct583]

True enough, though if the modern real estate market had existed in the 70's then "inflation" would have been something closer to 30-40%.

Like it or not "home values" decoupled from "housing costs" over the past two decades. The reason for that metric change was to preserve equivalency, you don't get to argue backwards because of it.

[rsync]

"Remember that the "biggest losers" in inflationary economies are people who hold assets, not investors ..."

The biggest losers among sophisticated, moneyed actors are indeed people who hold assets.

But the biggest losers overall are those with fixed incomes dealing with rapidly rising prices.

[dragonwriter]

> But the biggest losers overall are those with fixed incomes dealing with rapidly rising prices.

So, non-SS pensioners?

Not: Social Security recipients (it has an inflation-indexed COLA).

Not: public benefit recipients (this inflation is in part a product of temporary increases to aid at the lower end of the economic spectrum).

Not: low-end labor, where prices are being bid up. (And also, often a beneficiary of the previous point.)

[rdtwo]

Only if you own paper debt assets like bonds. If you own dividend paying stock or property you are going to be fine. If you buy stock in a company with a heavy debt load that is slowly digging it’s way it (not sure they exist) you might come out a big winner

[newacct583]

> But the biggest losers overall are those with fixed incomes dealing with rapidly rising prices.

And therein lies one of the big pseudo-centrist points here. A mild reduction[1] in fixed-rate entitlement programs is coming down the pipe at some point regardless. This essentially gets the hard part of that political calculus out of the way "for free" (or at least in a cheaper way, since you can blame covid).

[1] Contra the nutjobs who predict the Death of Social Security or whatnot.

[mc32]

I don't think the financial system of the 70s is the same financial system of the 2000s. We were were also pouring a lot of resources into countering the 'second world' including the Vietnam war, missile defence, etc. add to that the 'oil shock.'

As far as I can recall, the current system is 'calibrated' for 2-3% annual growth. 5-8% is entering the banana republic inflation zone. You, know, where they'd have to 'devaluate' their currencies to make up the difference?

[Spooky23]

Huh? We just ended a 20-year war and are stuck in a military investment cycle to replace the worn out and obsolete equipment.

[jonathankoren]

> As far as I can recall, the current system is 'calibrated' for 2-3% annual growth. 5-8% is entering the banana republic inflation zone.

This is simply untrue. Like not even close the definition of hyperinflation used by economists. Hyperinflation is a monthly inflation rate of 50%, or 12974.63% annually.

This is scare tactics.