> The disagreement is large enough that it's not particularly uncommon to find people who believe the government is so far off that they must be lying about the numbers.
You're absolutely right that there is often disagreement and controversy around how to properly measure inflation and the real purchasing power of money over time. Reasonable people can disagree on the right methodology. That said, I don't think the disagreements are so large as to render inflation measures meaningless. There are established economic principles and data sources used to estimate inflation (CPI, PCE, etc.), and while imperfect, they do provide a useful gauge. The Fed and other economic authorities put a lot of work into getting the numbers right, even if some will inevitably dispute them.
> I explicitly used covid inflation as an example where wealth was not created. Asset owners made large profits not because they created anything or provided any value, but simply because the unit of account changed to their benefit (notably here, the government did not report increased inflation for almost 2 years after it happened. Anyone looking at asset prices saw it immediately).
Do you think that when the amount of money in circulation doubles and prices double this creates “large profits” for those selling at the doubled prices? You seem intelligent so I am struggling to make sense of your comment above.
Certainly tax laws should be changed so that citizens do not pay capital gains taxes due to gains that are due to government money printing and inflation. This is controversial because the wealthy would benefit far more from fixing this.
> The purpose of a communication network is to enable communication. There are plenty of non-commercial reasons to do that. In fact the Internet originally had rules against commercial use.
I did not ask what the purpose of a communication network is. I asked “what is the purpose of those who deploy communications networks?” Do you see the difference this makes? Governments may deploy them for reliable communications during war as was the purpose of the early internet - what matters is robustness and performance and profit is an alien concept for such projects since they are funded by taxes. When communications networks are built by sellers of communication services however (potential) profit is the number one concern to make sure the business is sustainable.
You're absolutely right that there is often disagreement and controversy around how to properly measure inflation and the real purchasing power of money over time. Reasonable people can disagree on the right methodology. That said, I don't think the disagreements are so large as to render inflation measures meaningless. There are established economic principles and data sources used to estimate inflation (CPI, PCE, etc.), and while imperfect, they do provide a useful gauge. The Fed and other economic authorities put a lot of work into getting the numbers right, even if some will inevitably dispute them.
> I explicitly used covid inflation as an example where wealth was not created. Asset owners made large profits not because they created anything or provided any value, but simply because the unit of account changed to their benefit (notably here, the government did not report increased inflation for almost 2 years after it happened. Anyone looking at asset prices saw it immediately).
Do you think that when the amount of money in circulation doubles and prices double this creates “large profits” for those selling at the doubled prices? You seem intelligent so I am struggling to make sense of your comment above.
Certainly tax laws should be changed so that citizens do not pay capital gains taxes due to gains that are due to government money printing and inflation. This is controversial because the wealthy would benefit far more from fixing this.
> The purpose of a communication network is to enable communication. There are plenty of non-commercial reasons to do that. In fact the Internet originally had rules against commercial use.
I did not ask what the purpose of a communication network is. I asked “what is the purpose of those who deploy communications networks?” Do you see the difference this makes? Governments may deploy them for reliable communications during war as was the purpose of the early internet - what matters is robustness and performance and profit is an alien concept for such projects since they are funded by taxes. When communications networks are built by sellers of communication services however (potential) profit is the number one concern to make sure the business is sustainable.