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Socialists of all types have been saying this for ages and explaining all the ways you could do it without succumbing to a deflationary spiral, but I’m sure libs will take this as evidence that Xi doesn’t understand econ 101 and that he’s ruining China.
Won’t deflation increase the value of money, and so enrich those with accumulated money more than those barely scraping by?
Deflation is not a problem in the Chinese case because of their unique circumstances. Chinese households have very high savings so they are actually better off from deflation. They also have an ultra high investment rate which is set by the government. So they don’t need to worry about a deflationary spiral.
For other countries deflation will have different effects which may largely be negative (although that still depends on why deflation is happening). However, the fears of deflationary spirals are … completely overblown. Not only does deflation require abnormal circumstances, but fixing it is extremely easy even for capitalist governments.
How could we possibly have an economy that’s not based on constant growth? It’s absolutely inconceivable! I mean, what would we even do if we weren’t endlessly chasing that sweet, sweet GDP growth? Imagine a world where we actually meet everyone’s needs, live sustainably, and focus on well-being instead of mindless expansion—utter madness! Clearly, the only way to be “healthy” is to keep growing forever on a finite planet.
But that level of stability would mean no one could make themselves richer!
The thing is: nature will bring the stability anyway. It just won’t include us. Sucks that we all have to die because the greediest among us cannot pull head from ass.
I don’t think it’s given humans will go extinct in the foreseeable future, rather the capitalist system will collapse and create room for a more sane one.
I don’t think you necessarily need GDP growth to have a healthy small amount of inflation. Inflation has more to do with monetary supply than GDP growth.
I’d argue that inflation is best viewed as a result of decisions made by business owners rather than a passive outcome of market forces. Businesses increase prices to boost profit margins, often beyond what is necessary to cover costs. While external conditions like monetary policy or wage increases may create an environment conducive to price hikes, the decision to raise prices ultimately lies with businesses.
He’s dead right.
Humanist economics has a central pillar: abundance. Profit maximization requires scarcity, and geopolitical or other suppression of competition. In addition, higher interest rates prevent abundance, and funding of supply increases of farming production, and increase housing costs, insurance greed, and so affordability of other stuff.
The war on Russia led to higher interest rates in order to ration oil use, and employment, again limiting production.
Deflation is not even bad for the rich. Lower interest rates stabilize housing prices, and reduce government deficits, and improve financial asset values. Wages don’t generally go down, and they definitely don’t go down under policies of abundance.
Abundance means more work is available. Prices are lower letting workers and others afford more stuff leading to more abundance. UBI is the most important anti-slavery (also humanist) and prosperity (also humanist) policy alternative. It is inflationary, but makes high paying work that outpaces inflation easy to find.
The key about inflation vs deflation is how balanced income growth is relative to inflation. If it is only oligarchy making income/wealth gains, then you should address your complaints to that structure instead of the inflation.
The problem with deflation is that people end up hoarding all their cash because you get a return on it without doing anything with it.
So large swathes of money start getting taken off the playing field. Investment dries up, growth slows, people get laid off, and this cycle continues, one thing causing the next, causing the next in a circle. It’s one of the most destructive forces possible to an economy.
That’s why the central banks strive for around 2%. It’s enough to force people with cash lying around to invest it in something useful which will create jobs, etc, but not so high that it will make everyone panic and run the banks.
This excuse only affects fractional reserve banking and investments. It does nothing to non capital focused economies, and China’s economy is less than 40% capital.
That’s a pretty important caveat. I would take it one step further to say that it only matters in non-communist governments. Yes, maybe China can pull it off. But even losing a large chunk of 40% of the economy will be pretty bad and they’d have to switch to something pretty close to fully communist pretty quick to pick up the slack.
Which is the plan anyway, especially after the failure of allowing privatized luxury housing development.
But more importantly, a country that doesn’t privatize any of the essentials has nothing to fear from the collapse of private markets; everyone will still be housed, fed, and cared for.
Im no economist but with negative inflation it drives consumers to put off that next purchase.
Why buy the car you have been saving for, or put a bid on a house, upgrade your TV or get replacement running shoes if prices are staying the same or potentially going down? A way to make sure that people spend now and dont put it off is that they know the longer they wait the higher chance that the shoes are going to be $5 more in a months time or two.
If people arent spending then conversely people arent selling, building, labouring, etc and then everything grinds to a halt. People get laid off, people cant pay rent or mortgages, things go to shit.At least this is the way i understand it, and like i said im no expert.
Consumers living paycheck to paycheck don’t have the time or energy to pay attention to inflation. If they can afford something they need then they buy it. If you need gas for your car then you buy it regardless of the price.
The main reason global markets aren’t absorbing the demand is sanction on chinese produced goods. But anyhow it will be interesting to see how the renewable energy boom picks up steam. Jupiter 1 hydrogen gas generator engine is a pretty huge milestone.
Fuck sanctions.
If domestic producers want domestic buyers, they should lower their prices to be competitive and take less profit as a result. But they won’t do that if they can have the government step in to artificially raise the prices of competitors’ products.
If they can’t do this while paying employees respectable wages, then it shouldn’t be up to the government to step in and bail them out.
We’re literally letting the government force us to have worse deals so people richer than us can be even richer at our expense.
Jupiter 1 hydrogen gas generator engine
https://newatlas.com/energy/worlds-largest-pure-hydrogen-electrical-generator/
at 15kg per kw, this is 300x less efficient than a fuel cell for just electricity output. Distributed fuel cells can use waste heat for domestic hot water needs.
A better use of combusting H2 for electrical power generation, is changing the input valves on electrical generating NG turbines. That is just 2x less efficient than a fuel cell.
Interesting but I’m skeptical that they would develop this if they could simply convert a NG turbine and it would only be 2x less efficient.
It’s more like the Jupiter 1 “fuel consumption” for 30mw output can be way overestimated.
only be 2x less efficient.
More technical description is combustion is 50% as efficient as a fuel cell. It is very significant difference.
While consumers can benefit from falling prices, persistent deflation can also lead to a downward spiral for spending and investment.
This is not a worry for China because they have maintained an absolutely insane rate of investment and growth for decades now.
According to this data, while investment as a percentage of GDP has fallen off during Xi’s term, it still remains well above historical standards and near the top by world standards. Of all the major economies on earth, China is the only one with investment as a percentage of GDP above 40%. Even economies many times smaller and less developed like India still have a lower investment rate than the Chinese.
Furthermore, if you look at the household expenditure per capita, the post covid times still have a much higher level of household consumption than 2019. Not only that, but investment spending is mutually exclusive with consumer spending. Complaining both that China has insufficient investment and consumption is interesting to say the least …
The State Council Information Office, which is charged with fielding questions about China’s leaders, didn’t respond to a request for comment and referred the Journal‘s questions to other agencies that didn’t reply to its queries.
Lol
While U.S. consumers have been frustrated with years of elevated inflation, the economy has also been robust, unemployment remains low, and the rate of price growth has slowed substantially since hitting a high in 2022.
If the American economy is doing so good, how did Trump manage a clean sweep?
the rate of price growth has slowed substantially since hitting a high in 2022.
If the American economy is doing so good, how did Trump manage a clean sweep?
Right in that quote, the best thing they can say about our economy is not that it’s getting better, but that it’s not getting worse as quickly as it was two years ago.
