Hacker News Reader

Comment by ccuqui | Hacker News Reader

Inflation is the direct result of governments printing money like crazy to hide why they spend money like crazy and continue to be extremely inefficient and corrupt instead of cutting expenses and becoming more efficient and leaner. And it mainly affects the poorest in society. How can that be good?! Don't take my word for it: see what is happening in Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, etc and then decide for yourself how "good" it is to live in a country with high inflation rates...

View on HN

Brazil has had its inflation under control (for Latin American standards, anyway) since the 90s, after the Plan Real. Also, Latin American runaway inflation is something that has been happening since the 60s, every measure under the sun has been tried to fix it, with only limited success in some cases. Anyway, it's a bit more complicated than "spending money like crazy and being corrupt".

In Argentina the cause is plain and simply "spending money like crazy and being corrupt". Source: I've been living here for my whole life.

Read Silvio Gesell's book or watch the silvio gesell institute on youtube. His economic theory is based on his experience of inflation and deflation crises in argentina. His son founded villa gesell.

In the last few years the Real has dropped about 50% compared to gold and the dollar.

Inflation != value compared to the dollar

Unlike other Latin American countries, Brazil's economy is mostly decoupled from the dollar -- people don't save in dollars, they save in reales. Prices are all in reales (including housing and cars, something that is usually in dollars in other countries), and most importantly, the national debt is in reales, and mostly internal. A rise in the price of the dollar is not necessarily harmful to the people living there if the prices don't rise the same way, and it can even be beneficial by making the exports more competitive in the world market.

I compared it to gold first. Other currencies are additional datapoints:

https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=XAU&to=BRL&view=5Y

Reply on news.ycombinator.com