> Inflation is an extreme handout to the wealthy.
> Debatable
Wait how is this debatable. We saw wealth inequality explode in ‘20 ‘21 ‘22 and ‘23 as the wealthiest Americans navigated rapid inflation and then rate cuts by strategically buying everything they could and then turning into activist investors and forcing RTO and mass layoffs despite record profits.
Wealthy people can take advantage of economic turmoil by selling high and buying low, the greatest example being Buffets mass sell off and subsequent repurchasing.
What am I missing?
> What am I missing?
Wealth inequality was previously at its highest point in the US during the Gilded Age, when the US was still on the gold standard and inflation was not as much of a thing (and deflation often reined):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Deflation
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression
During the 1970s, US inflation was quite high:
* https://www.investopedia.com/inflation-rate-by-year-7253832
and yet during the same time period the wealth ownership of the top 0.1% went down:
* https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-i...
US wealth inequality only really started rising in the 1980s—as inflation went down. Further, as The Guardian graph shows, concentration has gone up from the 1990s up until now, even though the last few decades have had the lowest, and most stable, inflation numbers in history:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moderation
So the link between inflation and wealth concentration does not appear to have any correlation according to the historical data.
I would hazard to guess that a more promising link to wealth concentration/inequality would be the cutting of tax rates (both corporate and personal) starting during the Reagan administration, and how it reduced redistribution of money to the lower- and middle-class.
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> Wait how is this debatable. We saw wealth inequality explode in ‘20 ‘21 ‘22 and ‘23 as the wealthiest Americans navigated rapid inflation
What "rapid inflation"? Inflation was right around the historical average for 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024. The only outlier was 2022 with 8% inflation, but that's still far from "rapid" historically speaking: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...