Inflation

Inflation is a general increase in the money supply.

One of the effects, that may accompany inflation (and is sometimes confused for it) is a rise in prices.

Definitions

There are several ways to define inflation, with varying usefulness and ability to explain the phenomenon.

Increase in money supply

Prices do not stay constant, they are always rising and declining. An increase in the money supply - inflation, properly defined - has a tendency to raise them in general.

When the supply of money is increased, people have more money to offer for goods. If the supply of goods does not increase — or does not increase as much as the supply of money — then the prices of goods will go up. Each individual dollar becomes less valuable because there are more dollars. Therefore more of them will be offered against, say, a pair of shoes or a hundred bushels of wheat than before. A "price" is an exchange ratio between a dollar and a unit of goods. When people have more dollars, they value each dollar less. Goods then rise in price, not because goods are scarcer than before, but because dollars are more abundant.

Overly large increase in money supply

This has been a popular definition in the past. A large increase in the money supply would have the accompanying effects - like price increases. However, it is not clear how large exactly an increase has to be, making in a judgment call.

Unbacked money

According to Rothbard, inflation is the process of issuing money beyond any increase in the stock of specie. In other words, new money substitutes are issued without backing of their specie. The great gain comes from the issuer’s putting new money into circulation. The profit is practically cost­less, because, while all other people must either sell goods and services and buy or mine gold, the government or the commer­cial banks are literally creating money out of thin air. They do not have to buy it. Any profit from the use of this magical money is clear gain to the issuers.

Rising prices

In a popular definition, inflation is an ongoing rise in the general level of prices.

However, this fails to explain why is inflation dangerous or exactly how does it cause its effects. "Why should a general rise in prices weaken real economic growth? Or how does inflation lead to the misallocation of resources? Moreover, if inflation is just a rise in prices, surely it is possible to offset its effects by adjusting everybody's incomes in the economy in accordance with this general price increase."

It is sometimes claimed, that a specific price increase - e.g. of oil - can increase all prices on average. But if people must spend more on oil, will not prices drop for the goods that they can no longer afford to purchase? (It is also impossible to establish an average of prices of different goods and services.)

It is contended that the increase in commodity prices often occurs before the increase in the money supply. Immediately after the outbreak of war in Korea, strategic raw materials began to go up in price on the fear that they were going to be scarce. Speculators and manufacturers began to buy them to hold for profit or protective inventories. But to do this they had to borrow more money from the banks. The rise in prices was accompanied by an equally marked rise in bank loans and deposits. If these increased loans had not been made, and new money had not been issued against the loans, the rise in prices could not have been sustained. The price rise was made possible, in short, only by an increased supply of money.

The process of inflation

Historically, governments have often inflated by debasing coins, but they found it is cheaper and faster by creating paper money on a printing press.

In the present is the method usually more indirect. As an example from the US, the government will sell its bonds or other 'IOUs' to the banks. In payment, the banks create "deposits" on their books against which the government can draw. A bank in turn may sell its government IOUs to the Federal Reserve Bank, which pays for them either by creating a deposit credit or having more Federal Reserve notes printed and paying them out. This is how money is manufactured.

The value of money varies for basically the same reasons as the value of any commodity. Just as the value of a bushel of wheat depends not only on the total present supply of wheat but on the expected future supply and on the quality of the wheat, so the value of a dollar depends on a similar variety of considerations. The value of money, like the value of goods, is not determined by merely mechanical or physical relationships, but primarily by psychological factors which may often be complicated.

The value of a unit of money does not depend only on the present supply of money outstanding. It depends also on the expected future supply of dollars. If most people fear, for example, that the supply of dollars is going to be even greater a year from now than at present, then the present value of the dollar (as measured by its purchasing power) will be lower than the present quantity of dollars would otherwise warrant.

Effects of inflation

See also: For and against paper money

Profit of money creators

Increases in the money supply initiate an exchange of something for nothing. They divert real funding away from those, that generate wealth towards the holders of the newly created money. The general increases in prices, which follow, are a symptom of the erosion of money's purchasing power.

Rising prices

The increase in the money supply will create a new level of prices, but it will not be the old level of prices, multiplied in all relations and quantities.

New money will change the spending habits of people. Also, some of them will make gains and losses and will alter their spending habits accordingly. Therefore, all prices will not increase uniformly. Some prices will rise more than others, therefore, some people will be per­manent gainers, and some permanent losers, from the inflation.

Further misconceptions

Velocity of money

It is frequently said that the value of money depends not merely on its quantity but on the "velocity of circulation." Increased "velocity of circulation," however, is not a cause of a further fall in the value of the dollar; it is itself one of the consequences of the fear that the value of the dollar is going to fall (or, to put it the other way round, of the belief that the price of goods is going to rise). It is this belief that makes people more eager to exchange dollars for goods. The emphasis by some writers on "velocity of circulation" is just another example of the error of substituting dubious mechanical for real psychological reasons.

See also Is Velocity Like Magic? by Frank Shostak.

Shortage of goods

A rise in prices can be caused either by an increase in the quantity of money (inflation) or by a shortage of goods — or partly by both. Wheat, for example, may rise in price either because there is an increase in the supply of money or a failure of the wheat crop. But we seldom find, even in conditions of total war, a general rise of prices caused by a general shortage of goods. Even in the Germany of 1923, after prices had soared hundreds of billions of times, high officials and millions of Germans were blaming the whole thing on a general "shortage of goods" — at the very moment when foreigners were coming in and buying German goods with gold or their own currencies at prices lower than those of equivalent goods at home. Similarly, the rise of prices in the United States since 1939 was attributed to a "shortage of goods", while official statistics have shown a rising industrial production.

Nor is a better explanation to say that the rise in prices in wartime is caused by a shortage in civilian goods. Even to the extent that civilian goods were really short in time of war, the shortage would not cause any substantial rise in prices if taxes took away as large a percentage of civilian income as rearmament took away of civilian goods.

Budget deficits

A budget deficit is inflationary only to the extent that it causes an increase in the money supply. If it is fully financed by the sale of government bonds paid for out of real savings, it does not need to cause any inflation.

Inflation can occur even with a budget surplus if there is an increase in the money supply notwithstanding.

Wage price spiral

Sometimes it is spoken of so-called "inflationary pressures" — particularly the so-called "wage price spiral."

If it were not preceded, accompanied, or quickly followed by an increase in the supply of money, an increase in wages above the "equilibrium level" would not cause inflation; it would merely cause unemployment. And an increase in prices without an increase of cash in people's pockets would merely cause a falling off in sales. Wage and price rises, in brief, are usually a consequence of inflation. They can cause it only to the extent that they force an increase in the money supply.

See also

• Wikipedia page on Inflation
• Inflation from The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
• What You Should Know About Inflation, Henry Hazlitt
• The Revolutionary War and the Destruction of the Continental by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
• Fiat Money Inflation in France (pdf) by Andrew Dickson White