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> Inflation is not prices; it is the rate of change in prices.

Inflation is actually the increase in the money supply. The term is used wrong almost everywhere today.

Price indexes like the CPI are what measure the change in prices of a set of goods.

Inflation can influence prices since the supply of money changed, but they aren't directly linked.

Edit: getting plenty of requests for a source here, especially because you will find countless sources online using the price increase definition.

https://www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-commentar...

This is oddly reflective of the elitism that cost the DNC it's victory. "Well actually, my poor man, a tomato is a fruit and every PhD economist knows that inflation is connected to fiscal policy's influence on the monetary supply"

The every day person uses the culinary definition of tomato, and inflation means that those tomatoes cost more at Walmart.

I would expect a botanist to know that a tomato is technically a berry, just like I would expect an economist to know that inflation is technically defined as an increase in the money supply.

Everyday people can use whatever definition they want. That doesn't mean economists, the Fed, etc should say "inflation" when they mean "price of goods".

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The tomato price is too damn high!

Get it yet?

This exchange is like a microcosm of the educated elite trying to talk to ordinary people.
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> Inflation is actually the increase in the money supply. The term is used wrong almost everywhere today.

The word has multiple meanings. That’s monetary inflation. The primary meaning in use today is price inflation.

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> Inflation is actually the in the money supply

No, that is expansion of the monetary base. Inflation is an increase in price levels. If a country’s money supply contracts while prices rise that’s inflation.

The problem with the metallic definition is a country that loses half its territory and most of its reserves after losing a 19th-century war, thereby setting off double-digit price increases across its economy, doesn’t “inflate” from a monetary base perspective. Once we understood these concepts were separate, we segregated the terms. Insisting inflation refers exclusively to monetary-base expansion is phlogiston-theory stuff.

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> Inflation is actually the increase in the money supply. The term is used wrong almost everywhere today.

I'm sorry I just can't find a single source backing you up. All sources I find define inflation as increase in prices.

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> Inflation is actually the increase in the money supply. The term is used wrong almost everywhere today.

Do you have a source that this is the „correct“ definition? Wikipedia for example uses the definition you think is wrong, and specifically says that CPI measures inflation.

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Inflation is increase in the cost of living.

You've linked to a privately written article ("The views authors express in Economic Commentary are theirs and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland ") by someone who worked for the Cleveland Fed, who blames printing currency for inflation. No doubt that debasement of the currency increases the nominal prices of things. But it's hard to square the idea that that's all there is to inflation when you consider that lots of countries had inflation after COVID. They didn't all coordinate on printing currency.

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There are many faces of inflation. The "money supply" you are talking about was not the primary driver in the last few years and there was robust demand for the treasury issuance. You will see the money supply inflation pick up when treasury auctions start to fail. I believe this will happen down the road but not soon. Most of the inflation was driven by other factors: low-income labor shortage, and a supply side shortage that fueled an increase of prices for commodities and anything else up the chain.
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I am sorry, but you are wrong, since about the 1960s. Inflation could be caused by money supply, sure.

But don't take it from me:

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back...

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inflation.asp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explaine...

https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/statistics/inflation

https://gisme.georgetown.edu/news/what-the-hell-is-inflation... (Inflation used to mean what you claim it means...but doesn't anymore)

https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/HighSchool/Inflation....

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/what-is-inflation

https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/inflat...

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/26/inflation-definition-evolut... (There is some argument that I may too be wrong, and inflation is coming to mean high prices, but when the DNC campaign was talking about low inflation, it was not referring to prices, but change in prices.)

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The increase in money supply means nothing if goods and services are produced in larger quantities.
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"Inflation is actually the increase in the money supply."

NO.

It is the cost of the goods. What people will pay.

Inflation Contributors:

30% money supply

30% was corporations raised prices specifically under cover of people blaming the government. This was actually listed on earnings calls, for profit.

30% supply chain shortages.

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> Inflation is actually the increase in the money supply

It's not that simple. That might be how it is defined in economy textbook, but in practice, how do government agencies measure inflation? You have predefined basket of consumer goods and record their prices over time, and that price increase is reported as "inflation rate", and that's what gets reported in TV news.

And yet you somehow blame people for misunderstanding the term when the wrong definition is hammered into their brains all the time by all the mainstream media.

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