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How Inflation Works

This might be a long post, but in the context of the current election, and broader, I wanted to write up a primer on how inflation works. This is a hot topic at the moment, and one of the strongest talking points in politics, particularly within the right-leaning circles. It's also one of the least understood topics generally, and thus one of the easiest to inaccurately blame on people or actions for political purposes. Furthermore, actions related to inflation are the perhaps surprising cause of several pressing societal woes (eg: housing prices, wage stagnation, etc.), so it would be great if the general population better understood what was going on. So, hopefully, this will help. What causes inflation Milton Friedman (famous economist) once observed: "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." This is, broadly, true: inflation happens when more money is competing for the same amount of goods and services, and thus the people with the goods ans services