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Inflation and Prices blog
A thought experiment where the grocery store gets rent control too A labelled satire applies rent control's rules to a supermarket, then matches each joke to a documented effect of the real policy. A thought experiment where every price in town is set by a committee A labelled satire follows a Fair Prices Committee from bread to gasoline until the shelves empty, then matches each joke to the historical record. Price Controls on Medicines Today Mean Fewer New Medicines Tomorrow Government price setting for drugs buys a visible saving now and costs cures that are never invented, and the patent bargain explains why. Inflation hurts the poor most, and the arithmetic of a fixed paycheck Inflation is a tax nobody voted on, and it falls hardest on wage earners, retirees and savers. The arithmetic, worked out on a labelled $50,000 paycheck. Greedflation is a story that skips the question of why greed took a break Corporate greed was as constant in 2019 as in 2021, so the real question is what changed to let companies raise prices. What caused the inflation of 2021 to 2023, weighing the honest evidence Supply shocks played a part, but the biggest driver was demand pumped up by trillions in federal spending and near-zero interest rates. The Great Inflation of the 1970s was a policy choice, not bad luck Inflation from 1965 to 1982 began with money creation and political pressure on the Fed before the oil shocks, and blaming OPEC lets policymakers off the hook. Modern Monetary Theory says deficits do not matter, and 2022 answered it MMT holds that a country borrowing in its own currency need only watch inflation. The inflation of 2021 and 2022 showed how fast that limit arrives.