I am no big city economist, but it’s really annoying how deeply inflated everything is. We see regular inflation at the market, the mall (do people even go to those anymore?), and sadly in our rents. We even shrink-flation which I heard on NPR about how a beverage for example is smaller but higher price. It a really fuckin’ lame.
Whenever I say “ :improve-society: man I wish didn’t have to pay so much for XYZ” I often hear the classics like “supply and demand” , or “global supply chain”, or “you be happy you can afford XYZ” which got me thinking how would leftists solve this.
Off the top of my head I would imagine things like CEOs would have some pay cap, stopping C-levels from siphoning their profits up, stronger labor unions, and some other stuff but I really don’t know. Professor Wolff always talks about worker co-ops and I would imagine workers owning stuff is better (which it is of course) but how ideally would it look? :wolff-shining:
What do leftist thinkers say would curb inflation? How would even lightweight leftist economic policies help keep prices for stuff reasonable? I just curious as I would like to think about how leftist theory would address this real problem we all experience.
What have smarter leftist people than I said would fight inflation.
Assuming a capitalist or market socialist economy:
Depends on the cause. The current high inflation in consumer goods is pure opportunism, and can be fought with price controls. Inflation caused by an increased money supply can be fought with taxes (and isn't actually that big of a deal if wages are going up). Inflation caused by supply/demand is actually hard and can't be fixed in the short term; you're stuck with investing in the industries that create those goods (or substitutes for them) and providing the impacted people direct economic aid until industry can catch up.