Your dollar has lost 96-97 percent of its purchasing power since 1913.
For over a hundred years after America’s founding—roughly 1774 to 1900—prices did not steadily rise. Net cumulative inflation over that entire century was close to zero. Prices often fell, not because of poverty or collapse, but because of human ingenuity: more efficient factories, labor-saving machines, railroads slashing transportation costs, etc. Each new invention meant goods cost less to make and less to buy.
American workers are 5–6 times more productive per hour than in 1913. That explosion in productivity should have dramatically increased your dollar’s purchasing power—goods should cost a fraction of what they do now. Instead, the exact opposite happened: You work harder, produce more, and your money buys less every single year. That gap—between what your productivity should have delivered and what inflation actually let you keep—is the precise measure of what was taken.
The Great Depression gave those in power the justification they needed. "A government with control of the money supply can create currency from nothing and spend whatever it wants, on whatever it wants, without asking your permission, without passing a tax bill, without ever having to tell you what it is costing you. "
What that means today: Since the 1970s, housing costs have outpaced general inflation by 2-3 times. Medical costs have outpaced it by 3-5 times. College tuition has outpaced general inflation by 4-5 times since 1980. An entire generation has been effectively priced out of homeownership, one serious diagnosis away from bankruptcy, and entering the workforce not just broke but deeply indebted.
Inflation is also the most regressive tax ever devised. It transfers wealth upward—from those who earn money to those who already own things.
Full article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/t....heft-your-good-defla
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