True or False? Inflation devalues wages.

Being a free country and all, being in a free market as well, how could anyone determine for another the amount they wish, care or are able to make? This is a basic right just as the right to defend your self with a gun. The right to provide for yourself is a front row item. However, there is no right for one to live off the efforts of another even though our taxation laws allow the government to grab from one group and give to another. That is unjust.

 

So you're assuming that everybody's wages rose 20%? Not just the average person's wages?

But there are also individuals whos wages haven't increased at all when inflation is 10%, and won't increase for a long time. The individual variations cause some to benefit and others to lose, which means they are benefitting at the expense of the losers.

But that still doesn't compensate for the fact that they had years worth of income lost due to inflation. My income could go up 5% next year to compensate for inflation over the previous 2 years, and I'd break even again, but that wouldn't change the fact that I still lost income during those 2 years.

 

i'm in the right section, it says top economics moments

whatever that gobbledygook says, i'm guessing the moment means your herd of numbskulls hit on your artificial bait a lot

 

Nope.

OK

[quyote]But that still doesn't compensate for the fact that they had years worth of income lost due to inflation. My income could go up 5% next year to compensate for inflation over the previous 2 years, and I'd break even again, but that wouldn't change the fact that I still lost income during those 2 years.[/QUOTE]

The lost income because their salaries decreased relative to prices.

 

So your hypothetical situation only describes average wages going up 20%. Some wages don't go up at all, and they are harmed because their incomes were reduced due to inflation. That's why you need to get rid of inflation, so that you eliminate the possibility of people seeing their incomes go down from it.

 

To my knowledge, all during my long life, every time wages throughout the country increase, prices always increase, too. And, often, the price increases have come first, as we saw in the Nixon-Ford-Carter years with "Stagflation". The big fun came when Nixon imposed so-called "wage-and-price" controls... remember that? The wages were rigorously controlled, yet prices somehow kept on going up and up. What a royal mess that was! I'll always remember that time as being worse in a number of ways than this recession/stagnation thing we've been going through since 2007.

 

Why do you even bother with the resident troll really? His entire premise is a yet another baseless assumption if "wage increases 20% while inflation increases 10%" thus there is no inflation. ROLFMAO!@!

The progressive liberals on this board never cease to amuse me.

 

if that were the case, how did this country become the world's greatest producer of goods and services?

 

Another tiresome one-liner from jac, the guy who never responds directly to another person's post with any specificity at all. But in answer to your unrelated question, "goods and services" can be produced in stupendous quantities, and even at relatively high quality by countries with rigidly controlled economies and populations. Free-market wages and prices, however, should be based on relative worth and value in the marketplace. Thus, one commands the income that one's talents and contributions can get in open competition with everyone else....

So, a guy makes $20/hour making widgets. The price of all the stuff he buys regularly goes up 10%. Therefore, he wants a $2/hour raise just to keep up. You with me so far? But he only gets a raise of $1/hour. His purchasing power has just been eroded. You still with me? But, the issue of whether or not the country he and his company are in is the "greatest producer of goods and services" is irrelevant! Slave labor can produce the same kind of results! C'mon, 'fess up, jac! Did you go to one of these diploma-mill streetcorner colleges with only one bathroom...?

 

no, i'm not with you at all, your bs is what's tiresome

there have been times in this country when wages/purchasing power outpaced inflation

do you understand why the time value of money is the central concept in finance theory?

 

Of course. Now, tie that back into your pontification about how it made the U. S. the "greatest producer of goods and services". Like many people who simply gush one-liners, you exhibit no consistency in logic, or continuity of thought processes. With equal facility, I could suddenly ejaculate some luminescent phrase like, "It takes money to make money!" Whereupon everyone would have a rapturous reaction to the stunningly brilliant observation I had just made and collapse, awestruck and obeisant in the presence of such wit... right? At the freshman, and sometimes even the sophomore level....

Hey, you make what you're worth to the great marketplace in a free-market society, the "time value" of money notwithstanding. People with degrees in basketweaving may wait indefinitely before needing to address such stratospheric considerations as the "time value" of money. Why? Because of what they're worth to the job market! Relevance, jac! Connect the dots you already see on the page before adding others....

 

your bizarre rant is devoid of anything relevant

no wonder your assertions are so far from reality, it's all just political rhetoric

 

OK, then, back to yours.... Did you know that China has surpassed the United States as the greatest trading nation? Don't take my word for it: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/China-surpasses-US-Trading/2013/02/10/id/489655 Ooops! The nation that was the largest creditor nation on Earth at the end of WWII has become the greatest debtor nation, and now we're sliding even further downward, thanks to your precious Obama and the Federal Reserve crime syndicate that pulls his strings. NOW... tie THAT in with your off-topic nonsense about how we're the "greatest producer of goods and services" (?) and, while you're at it, tie it in with anything having to do with the thread topic -- like, how inflation erodes wages! Remember...?

We're on our merry way right straight down a path into collapse and default, jac, and at the end of this national economic evisceration the Federal Reserve and the other Central Banks of the world are going to take over everything. It will pull all of us under its power, jac, both us on the Conservative Right, and you "useful idiots" on the Left. The funny thing? I blame RINO Republicans every bit as much as I blame autocratic socialists like Obama. So long as we have nobody but socialists and RINO's running this government, WE ARE ******....

 

Sure, because we've always had at least level of inflation.

You are correct that there are times when wages have not kept up, in which real wages decreased. But there have been more times that wages have grown faster than inflation.

During the past 30 years, however, those time have been infrequent, because as a result of "trickle down" polices and outsourcing, we've seen almost all the growth in income and wealth over the past thirty years go to the 1%.

 

It's terrible.

Remember in 2000 our biggest budget problem was whether the surpluses would get too big?

Write you Tea Party of Grover representatives and tell them they should reverse that Bush tax cuts and military spending increases that squandered the surplus and got us into this debt mess.

 

Writing Tea Party reps is a huge waste of time. Most of them are more economically left-wing than some of the most left-wing liberal Democrats, as the past 2 years proved.

The only solution is to vote against them next year.

 

so what? we're the greatest producing nation

 

You would be surprised if you knew how disappointed and upset I am with the whole **** Republican Party right now. I'm *that* close to changing my Party affiliation (which we are required to do in Colorado) to simply "Independent".

I'm getting more and more upset with even my colleagues of the far-Right because of all their yammering about Roe v Wade and "generation theft" against "the children and the grandchildren". The one prong is going to run off all the women, and the other prong is going to run off all the Baby Boomers, including me. When you are forced to pay all your working life into something, you never want to hear some moron like Santorum or Hannity blowing off about how "we" just can't afford to meet "our" obligations. Of course "we" can! We the people, paid the money in, and so if there's any problem getting it back out again, the ******* government can have the Federal Reserve come running to our rescue, just like it did for these ******* negligent banker bastards! Whoa! I'll bet I'm sounding more like a Democrat now!

 

I've been disappointed with the Republican party since during Reagan's term, when they changed the word "conservative" from its older meaning of running a fiscally responsible house to cut taxes for the rich no matter what and damn the consequences. Among other things.

 

Busted whose windshield with an axe? Hey, jac -- I've got a video for you, and, all you hyperlibs be sure and have a real nice ****ing day, OK? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LUumD0MwL8