Feb

26

Inflation, from Ken Smith

February 26, 2008 |

A prominent web page should inform the public on how to take prices from the past and extrapolate them so future prices canbe determined, thus showing the public at large how much more money they will have to earn in the future to pay for the products and services they will require in the future.

The Federal Reserve should be required by law to do that, post it on their web site. The Establishment does not have a history of limiting inflation; its desire is for growth at any cost, and growth means pumping artificial money into the economy, either by government spending or by monetary action, or both simultaneously.

At one point in the 1960s I paid $8 per week for a housekeeping room. That included water, sewer, garbage, and central heating. I paid nominally for a natural gas burner and electricity for a small refrigerator and lighting for the room. That kind of living is no longer possible. In the first place all such housing has been ripped out of the community to be replaced by condos. Rentals are going for the costof buying a condo; that is, condo owners are renting their apartments at prices which cover their costs to purchase.

Thus the cost of shelter has gone from $8 a week to $200 a week. That figure represents an astronomical increase.Inflation. The same rate of increase is going on. So in another 20 years the same space will cost $5,000 per week, right?

At some point in the future, will Americans in major cities have to earn one-half million dollars per week in order to live the way they live now?


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  1. Fred on February 27, 2008 7:12 pm

    Inflation is destructive of savings. Bernanke himself has said Americans aren’t saving enough for their retirement and yet he now is the architect of an inflation that has savers funding his economic plans through the destruction by inflation of their savings.

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