Sunday, February 14, 2021

Will too much money be created for Biden? Will it, someday, over stimulate the economy?

Some Democrats and a lot of Republicans are worried that so much newly created money will lead to more serious inflation.

It's nothing new, but the process of creating money has accellerated recently (I think), due to the pandemic. Accellerated under Trump's watch at first, but now likely to continue under Biden.

As for inflation, I have personally felt, for years, that different sectors of the economy have different inflation rates. Overall inflation, across the entire economy, is harder to notice. It seems to be under the radar to economists and those setting Federal Researve policy.

For instance, in many metro areas, where people want to live and the jobs have been, home values and housing costs have been skyrocketing for years.

Other prices, such as for electronic gadgets, remain low and even falling given the capability of the newer products over the older products. Think computers, smartphones and even the services that feed them. Think Google, for instance. It's free, but we do pay in other ways. Think Facebook, Amazon and so forth.

Inflation does happen in certain sectors, but it's harder to notice if looking at the economy as a whole. We still have to fund the government and in a political climate of low taxes, the money must come from somewhere. Creating money isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does have consequences that need to be understood and planned around.

For instance, lower income people are more impacted by housing inflation than others as the cost for a primary residence could be a huge percentage of a lower income person's budget. Higher income people are usually the folks making policy.

One possible solution to this problem, in my opinion, is higher taxes on windfall profits from; for instance, selling property after high apprieciation in value.

Other solutions would be to just keep printing the money at a moderate rate and provide subsidy to lower income people so they can keep up with the rising costs of things like housing, medical bills and education. Think of money as being like poker chips. Numbers in the computers.

Better planning, such as more density in some residential areas, is also needed. Even with the creation of money, there is no getting around the realities on the ground. The ways we plan and the ways we live, in our habitat called Planet Earth, matters.

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