When the purchasing power of currency goes down, the people with the most currency actually lose the most, meaning the rich. In this way, there is a flattening effect. In cases of hyperinflation, having 3 million dollars is scarcely better than having 300, and money is revealed to be the apparition that it actually has been all along. The negative impacts of being unable to purchase basic goods and services also acutely affect the working class, but in a lot of cases that's already true in a "healthy" economy.

This is the reason the bourgeoisie is always pulling their hair out about it. It's also only ever used as a pretense to do austerity and extract even more wealth from the working class while cutting basic services.

Since value comes from labor instead of markets or scarcity, inflation also literally wouldn't effect our standard of living in a meaningful way at all if we set in place robust mutual aid networks and centers and divide the labor in a more just way.

When the narratives of capitalist realism and market necessity start to erode, this is actually a good thing, and this is the case with inflation as long as we are organized and prepared to exist beyond the market.

    • seitanicRights [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      No, that isn't it at all. Or do you intend to throw up your hands and give up with the market when (because it's when, not if) it fails?

      At any point I can nick a bag of vital wheat gluten from the food orchard (grocery store, the only place where food exists).

      When it is empty, it's a 5 mile ride to the farmland. I grew up there. It's trivial to walk away with large sacks of food with only a little geographic and seasonal knowledge. Beyond that, it's literally possible to forage.