So we know Inflation is mainly due to too much money swirling around in the economy and/or price gouging
Is the answer higher taxation on the rich? More price regulations? Or something more nuanced?
I changed the title from Leftist to Soc-dem, cause leftist answers usually mean complete revolution- what's an answer that I can condescendingly tell my centrist friends that will 'fix' the economy without throwing all working economists to :gulag:
Well, not handing BILLIONS OF UNACCOUNTABLE DOLLARS IN FORGIVABLE LOANS TO BUSINESSES would be a good place to start. Glad we didn't do that, right? Oh wait, we did? Well those companies used it responsibly to keep workers employed and didn't just dump it into stock buy backs, right?.... R-right? Fuck me they did?
https://www.investopedia.com/where-ppp-money-went-5216725
Well what was the fed up to? It's acting as a responsible, if undemocratic, institution to keep inflation down and hasn't essentially served as a money printer for finance capital for over a decade, right?
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/quantitative-easing-qe/
Sheeeeeeeeit. So you're telling me that we've handed Trillions of dollars to the upper echalons of society in the form of tax cuts, forgivable "loans" (aka subsidies), AND dramatically increased the money supply by putting it directly in the balance sheets of big banks? I can't possibly imagine why we have so much inflation! Its gotta be those pesky unemployment benefits and stimulus checks we gave to poor folk.
Unfortunately, there isn't a super quick answer to this. Neo-liberalism has been at the helm of our economic policy for 45 years and there's no silver bullet answer. Was it the massive tax cuts that occurred? Is it the bloated and disgusting military spending? Is it Quantitative Easing and money machine go brrrrrrr? Is it price increases in response to falling rate of profit trying to extract more from an advanced economy?
It's all of the above and more. The contradictions of capitalism are numerous and we're running headlong into them. Only a historical and material analysis can provide an accurate picture and solutions, and once you do that you're inevitably lead to "ooooohhhh, the socialists are right." Then we're back to @blairbnb's answer: