
Originally Posted by
tigerswood
Coming in way late here, but pretty interesting economic discussion for sure. Takes me back to the McDonald and Whaples days at Wake. Also, cool that they're both still at Wake, per the Econ staff directory. Also, I can't believe John Wood is still alive - dude just always reeked of cigs and whiskey. Made a pretty compelling case for the gold standard though. Also, F you Fred Chen. That guy sucked.
Anyways, @Juice, you seem pretty caught up on inflation, but our inflation has been extremely low for quite a while now, despite the massive influx of wealth to the top 1% and increasing wage gap. Inflation adjusted median incomes keep rising. It will be interesting (and likely concerning) to see how this may change in the next 1-2 years though with the Fed dumping more and more into the money supply and primarily lower-middle class workers being the ones to suffer from the COVID economic impact.
We've seen several examples lately of how technology has massively outpaced inflation and has resulted in stagnant price levels and even deflation. See cars and TVs, for example. Hopefully that will continue for many other goods/services (without any massive unemployment resulting from said technology).