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It seems to me politics are especially bad at countering inflation. People may be pissed off the "government isn't doing enough" to fix it. However, the levers the government can easily pull to fight inflation (raising taxes/interest rates, cut transfers/subsidies, lower consumption/wages) won't gain them any popularity points. Even worse, there are plenty of socially-desirable policies that'll make inflation worse: tax cuts, raises, loan forgiveness, more transfers. I'm grateful our system is even capable of doing unpopular things like raising interest rates. If monetary policy had heavier democratic influence, I'd worry high inflation would just be the long-term equilibrium.
Ontario's leader is under heavy fire for playing hardball and preventing educational workers from getting large raises. I don't know the details well, but couldn't one argue this is what fighting inflation looks like?
The question remains: what mechanism would be especially good at countering inflation?
Say we have an nRX-approved philosopher-king who holds absolute political power. What are his options if he decides to keep inflation level? It doesn’t seem amenable to single, decisive actions, so he’s left with the same interest rate, tax, or command economy options. I suspect those will cause roughly as much suffering/ if implemented decisively rather than by a democratic half-measure.
Then again, I’m not terribly well versed in economic history. How effective was austerity at fighting inflation? If it failed, was that due to
wreckerspolitical will, or to outside economic forces?At the simplest level of understanding, inflation is the consequence of too much money chasing too few goods.
Since none of us are Scrooge McDuck, we don't have a need for money: we want the goods that money represents.
An NrX solution would be to appoint Jeff Bezos as a Czar of logistics with the intent of increasing supply. I would nationalize all food banks and related charities, and import German managers from Aldi to coordinate them. I would create biblical-scale, Josephian government granaries that are needlessly large - seven years worth? - enough to convince even the most ardent hoarder that there is a lot of goods to be had.
I would also enlarge the strategic fossil fuel reserve and convince oil companies to invest in extraction with a fixed, contracted price. Housing is more difficult, but the creation of a state-based stockpile of common building materials - ensuring a stable price for construction - would also work, too.
The best thing about all of these agencies is that their mission is very defined: and can be phased out when the need passes.
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