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Comment by paulpauper | Hacker News Reader

Compounding is the 8th wonder in the world for this reason. It's amazing how in the span of a few decades how much prices have gone up. Except for clothes and electronics, everything seems to have gotten way more expensive compared to cpi. but even iPhones still cost a lot. The situation seems out of control for things like tuition .

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Compounding interest on savings for most of us is much less than inflation, so the purchasing power of work done gradually dwindles to nothing over time. Pretty depressing.

I think we’ve finally hit the point where compound interest on savings is outpacing inflation (at least in the US). Savings accounts at 5%+ interest are now widely available as long as you avoid the big banks like Chase and BofA. Meanwhile inflation is still elevated, but at least its well below 5%.

OTOH, the prior 10+ years even when inflation wasn’t very high, 1% or so interest rates meant savers were falling farther and farther behind.

That’s an interesting point and might end up being true. But inflation vs. savings rates over the past 2 years dwarf that benefit.

The really depressing thing is it's not just a diminishment of purchasing power, it's a transfer of purchasing power to those who first get to spend the newly created money (which tends to be financial institutions and people with the wealth/connections to gey big loans). Which needn't necessarily be the case, if the inflation occurred via evenly distributed "helicopter money" rather than the current approach.

This is maybe true if you only store money in cash equivalents. If you bought stocks, housing, or almost any other productive asset you'd easily beat inflation over your working lifetime.

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