cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17601144
Even as inflation continues to cool into the second half of 2024, many Americans say they’re still struggling to make ends meet.
Roughly one-third of U.S. workers say they’re living paycheck to paycheck and have nearly no money for savings after paying their monthly bills, according to a survey from personal finance website Bankrate.
If prices go back down, it’s Deflation the opposite of Inflation.
Inflation “cooling down” is not the opposite of Inflation, it’s merely less of it, or in other words prices going up but not as fast as before.
If people are crushed by the rise in living cost from previous high Inflation, less Inflation by itself will do nothing at all to solve their problem and in fact it will crush them some more, it’s just that the increase in crushing won’t be as fast as with higher Inflation.
There are only two ways of them to be less crushed: either Deflation (i.e. prices actually go down) or their incomes increase (which for most people means their salaries go up).
Why is deflation always so vigorously opposed by all sides. Why is it (deflation) so unthinkable/verboten?
The theory is that if prices are going down people will just delay their purchases waiting for better prices, so in aggregate they’ll consume less, though this of course only applies to things people don’t actually need immediately, so food prices or rents going down would have no such effect.
People not consuming as much is bad for a Consumer Society. However, one should ponder further on whether the Consumer Society itself is a good thing or a bad thing, especially in light of the Ecological damage its doing, that the infinity growth of Revenue it aims for is Mathematically impossible and that what it’s mostly achieving in the era of automation is to move more and more of the resources into the hands of fewer and fewer people.
Maybe people being desincentivised from buying on impulse lots of things they don’t need would be a good thing, even if the Owner Class would be unhappy for not making as many billions.