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Hell, it doesn’t even have to be UBI, just some assistance during Covid would’ve been nice. That one random $1500 check was treated like it was a king’s random and it was probably less than one month’s rent for alot of people.
Some will argue (and I do not know if it is true) that that is what triggered inflation now. Well, that, plus business loans during covid.
Others will argue that corporate greed was the cause of inflation, and they'd point to plenty of companies making record profits while raising their prices.
The same corporations had record losses before that. Inflation comes from free money, it's obvious to anyone with half a brain.
Corporate greed always existed. Thus, it is not the one that triggered inflation.
So, because it always existed, it's not possible for it to have gotten worse and contributed more to the problem?
Galaxy brain take.
Those people are wilfully ignoring the 3 trillion pumped into the market to prop it up when it crashed in 2020, which absolutely dwarfs the pittance handed out as stimulus.
That’s different. That money is the federal reserve printing, well, money and exchanging it for existing securities. They can always get money back in exchange for those securities if there is money oversupply. It is reversible.
When federal government spends more money than it has, there is no reverse mechanism, because the government does not get securities in exchange of new money it introduced to economy.
Yeah, I bet. Did they? Reverse it?
Yes, that's what the high fed rate means - they are taking it back, but because it was combination of the what Federal Reserve printed and the USGov "printed", there is disbalance, and the rates end up too high, thus inflation.
Don't forget Money Center banks like BofA went from 10% fractional reserve (they needed to theoretically have 10% of the amount they were lending) to 0%. That's just a fancy way of saying they can print money by fiat just like the Fed does. The Fed is weird though because it may as well be owned by the banks as well, but the head of the Fed is appointed by the president.
There are arguments though that given our somewhat teetering system that they did some "goodish" things to prevent all out collapse. Their actions have not changed anything systemic though, and the system it's arguably the problem.
I am not quite sure how big the impact of it is on inflation. I thought even before, banks could just go and take cash from federal reserve (borrow), essentially unlimited amount and that counted as reserve. So, from practical point of view, if they saw that they can lend the money with foot risk/benefit profile, they could always do that. And they would not have to pay rate for the money which is in reserve. So, not quite sure if inflation depends on this much.
I think this is a reasonable argument. A lot of it seems to just have been companies using inflation as an excuse to raise prices causing more inflation.
Company does not need excuses. It needs explanation for shareholders, to show that they adjust the price to have maximum profits. Nearly no customer will look at the increased price of the product and think “it is expensive, so I can’t afford to buy it, but they have good excuse why it is expensive, so I will buy it anyway”.