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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

>They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by printing money.

There are a countless other ways a country can do this and most of those are more targeted. The tax code is the most obvious example. Inflation is a flat tax of a few percentage points. If the goal is to wield power, it is much more important to control the tax code and move the income tax from 0% (generally true before the 16th Amendment in 1913) to 91% (1954-1963) or from 91% back down to 37% (the current rate). Blaming central banking as the primary cause for these issues just doesn't make sense to me.

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> Inflation is a flat tax of a few percentage points

Flat tax on cash holdings, which poor people don't have.

It's a negative tax on debt, which poor people tend to hold. It doesn't apply to assets.

Now if wages don't keep track with inflation, that's not a tax, it's an employer reducing wages.

I'm not sure the distinction you are making here. A flat tax is called that because it is flat in percentage not in nominal value. Yes, debtors will benefit more than creditors, but that doesn't mean it isn't a flat tax. Also it doesn't just impact cash which should be obvious from the last sentence. If inflation decreases the real amount owed by debtors, it also decreases the real amount that is owed to creditors, and therefore decreases the value of their investments.

> If inflation decreases the real amount owed by debtors, it also decreases the real amount that is owed to creditors, and therefore decreases the value of their investments.

I'm sure that's upsetting for wealthy people with investments

For the mom working 3 jobs at Macdonalds, as long as Macdonalds continues to pay an inflation linked salary, her debts being whittled away, that's great news.

Now if Macdonalds can cut salaries relative to inflation, that's a whole other problem.

> For the mom working 3 jobs at Macdonalds, as long as Macdonalds continues to pay an inflation linked salary

Huge assumption. Wages have not kept up with inflation since the 1970’s. Know what has? Asset prices. Guess who owns stocks/gold/real estate?

I think you are projecting a moral or political argument into my comments. That wasn't my intention. My point is that there are more powerful levers in the government than the inflation rate.

Sure, having your debt reduced by 6% or whatever is good, but the government could also easily forgive all federally owned college debt and 100% reduction is certainly better than 6%. Increasing the minimum wage is another example. That would more directly benefit that mom with 3 jobs more than inflation.

Whatever your political goals are, there is likely a much more powerful tool to accomplish them than nudging the inflation rate up or down a few percentage points.

>It's a negative tax on debt, which poor people tend to hold. It doesn't apply to assets.

Thank you!! This is the first time I've heard someone acknowledge this since the "inflation crisis" started. Inflation is good for student debt holders.

Could be, but it makes a lot of assumptions and is loose with terminology. Monetary inflation does not equal price or wage inflation necessarily. We are definitely seeing price inflation which no longer seems to be transitory. There does seem to be wage inflation, but that is not guaranteed. So while if wage inflation keeps up for those holding debt, then yes. I wonder though if those in the position of student debt have the least leverage to take advantage of the wage inflation.

The other thing is that costs go up. The impact of this is much greater if you are poor which could also affect your ability to actually pay the loans. One has to eat after all.

So imho, it's a lot more complicated for an individual. Sure for a corporation that borrows tens of millions for a new capital expenditure it makes debt cheaper. But that may or may not translate to someone that is poor and paying off debt.

Their student debt might go down but so does their chance of ever owning a home.

They hoodwinked an entire generation of children into going six-figures in debt, made the high school diploma worthless etc.

Before: -HS degree -no debt -immediately start a factory job that makes enough for an average home, 2 cars, and a spouse that doesn’t work

Now: -4 year degree, delaying income in prime years -graduate with a small house-worth of debt, with no house -your new job’s earnings in real terms is barely enough to rent -your spouse has to work too -have to make one car work

The American people have been robbed of their prosperity and sold a bucket of lies.

>There are a countless other ways a country

A country? The federal reserve is run by private individuals. It is a private bank. Don't let the name fool you.

"The Federal Reserve is private" is a meme at this point that is largely divorced from our usual meaning of public/private. Calling the Federal Reserve Board "private citizens" is like calling the Supreme Court Justices "private citizens". They are both officials appointed by the president, who must be confirmed by the Senate, and who collect a public salary. Any profits from the Federal Reserve go right back into the US Treasury. What more do we need to consider this part of the government?

While all supreme court justices are appointed, from my understanding only the chairman is appointed correct? Everyone that works for the fed is not necessarily appointed?

Maybe we say it is private but the government serves as the board :)

Seeing the tension over the years the Chairman, the President, and Congress implies to me that the government does not have absolute authority over the Fed.

All the board members are appointed. From their website:[1]

>The Board of Governors--located in Washington, D.C.--is the governing body of the Federal Reserve System. It is run by seven members, or "governors," who are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed in their positions by the U.S. Senate.

Not everyone who works for the Fed is appointed, but that is also true of the Supreme Court, Congress, the FBI, or any other part of the government. The leaders are political appointees and they oversee a bureaucratic system that includes many workers who are ostensibly apolitical.

>Seeing the tension over the years the Chairman, the President, and Congress implies to me that the government does not have absolute authority over the Fed.

Once again, just like the Supreme court. Both of these entities are designed to be more independent of the day-to-day political squabbles of the president and Congress.

[1] - https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/structure-federal...

Financial elite finances all candidates, some of them win, the winners appoint the financial elite to be board members of the organization that is capable of printing money and giving bailouts/buying poisoned assets from said financial institutions. The money is not made from FED profits, the money is made by the financial institutions owned by the board members. What's so hard to understand about that? It's clearly a scam.

It does not only happen at the central-banking level, but it's another tool used by them. Let me give you a similar example, not directly involving central banking, from my country. Paulo Guedes is the founder of BTG Pactual bank. He goes on and funds the candidate Jair Bolsonaro for presidency. Once elected, Bolsonaro appoints Guedes to Ministry of Economy. His monetary policies decisions makes the USD/BRL go from R$3.71 to R$5.70. November/2021 comes by and pandora papers are released. We find out the dude has almost 10 million USD stashed in offshore tax-heavens. His decisions made his personal fortune grow by 14 million BRL(equivalent to 956 years of minimum wage).

This does not involve central banking directly but the idea is the same: put the financial elite in positions that allow them to make large scale decisions to grow their personal fortunes while affecting the lives of all others. It's a scam.

>Financial elite finances all candidates, some of them win

Your entire point rests on this premise and once we accept this premise we acknowledge the entire government is already compromised. Once that happens why does the central bank matter when everything that follows could be accomplished some other way through that already compromised government? That is my fundamental point. It isn't that the central banks don't have power. It is that a central bank's power pails in comparison to the overall government. Therefore conspiracies theories about taking over the government to gain control of the central bank don't make much sense.

>Your entire point rests on this premise and once we accept this premise we acknowledge the entire government is already compromised.

I agree.

>Once that happens why does the central bank matter

I guess it matters because public awareness is necessary for us not to allow history to repeat itself. As Ford once said: "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

>I guess it matters because public awareness is necessary for us not to allow history to repeat itself.

But it is a symptom rather than a cause of the corruption. The energy spent on raising public awareness about this would likely be better served drawing attention to what we both seem to think is the underlying problem, the outsized influence that the wealthy have on the government.

Fair enough.

Your username is incorrect.

No.

It’s more akin to a public authority.

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