brockm on Nostr: One of the biggest fallacies I see when talking about inflation in terms of savings ...

One of the biggest fallacies I see when talking about inflation in terms of savings debasement, and in particular, focusing on how it disproportionately hurts the lowest percentiles of income earners, is the fact that the lowest percentiles have no savings. That's what being poor is. If they had excess income, they'd have savings and assets. But they don't. And the poor never have! So the only meaningful way to judge if the poor are being disproportionately affected by inflation, is to compare their income across time, to prices across time.

When we look at income data from the past few years, it actually turns out, that the poorest Americans saw their incomes grow by over 20% since the pandemic.

The massive rise in wages for low-skilled workers was actually one of the major self-reinforcing drivers of inflation.