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Comment by Phenomenit | Hacker News Reader

Because of the lack of true economic growth the central banks keep printing a copious amount of money and the market does everything it can to hide the inflation. Everything is becoming more expensive or worse in quality or amount. Everybody is richer but what the market is offering just keeps getting worse and its hiding the inflation.

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It has become so endemic in society; the money supply is controlled under the assumption that innovators and managers will somehow be able to keep finding efficiencies and improvements that manage to reduce the costs of production by X% per year in order to obscure the currency's diminishing value and hide the actual level of inflation. It's a really insidious form of taxation used by central planners, and societies have become completely addicted to it in a way that they're never going to be able to outrun it long enough to escape it.

It's really good for debters though, which is pretty much everybody these days. That 30 year mortgage you just got will mostly be inflated away.

Whoever gave you the loan knew that, and they adjusted the interest rate and conditions to still make it a good deal for them. If inflation had been lower, the loan's interest would have been too.

These aren’t independent variables as people on average can only pay so much for housing per month.

High interest rates lower the value of properties to keep things sufficiently affordable. Thus low inflation is actually really bad for first time home buyers who can a just afford the mortgage in year 1 and likely still just afford the mortgage in year 15.

not if your wages don't rise proportionally to inflation

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