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If only we had infinite inflation. Then I can be a wealthy trillionaire.
Do you see the problem with your logic here?
The problem isn't with my logic, it's with your lack of math. If you make $10k per month and have a $3k mortgage, and inflation results in everything going up evenly by 10x, you will be making $100k per month... and still have a $3k mortgage, for a gain of $2700 for other consumption (in old dollars). Inflation straightforwardly helps those with dollar-denominated debt. But that's cash flow, not wealth.
Inflation also builds wealth for people with leveraged real assets (like mortgaged homeowners) because the price of the house increases and the mortgage balance doesn't. The resulting equity is real wealth that people can cash out or borrow against. This is how the "housing ladder" worked - in an era where the need for a downpayment was the binding constraint on how big a house you could buy, the easiest way to save a downpayment on a large house was the inflation-and-leverage-driven capital gain on a small house.
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How are you getting poorer if you make the same income but we invented some housing tech where housing has a lower asset value? Now you have an existing mortgage. Your job is very secure. You love your job. You love your community an never plan to leave.
Literally nothing changes in your consumption before or after we invented this new tech that causes massive asset value deflation in housing. It’s just that the new person buying a house pays less. You can actually not increase your consumption basket and buy a second home because they are much cheaper.
This happened with televisions. I am watching television right now on a 15 year old tv. It was expensive then. Now I could buy a 3x larger tv at 20% of the price. I still enjoy watching television on my old tv that is now cheap.
I am obviously wealthier today because we invented cheap tv technology. In my Milton Friedman permanent income hypothesis I likely thought I would spend $10k during the rest of my life on televisions. Now I expect to spend maybe $3k.
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I don't think I've ever had a job where my wages have actually increased with anything close to the level of inflation. I usually have to get a promotion (or job hop) to make that back.
It's a toy example, obviously. Nevertheless, median wages and median disposable (after tax) personal income have typically grown faster than inflation. Lately they've dropped to about par, but that's because we're in this almost-recession.
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