Talk:Inflation

Causes

In my opinion, the present text of the section "Causes" is structured in a not entirely appropriate way, simply listing the opinions of various, partly historical, theoretical schools, often without any citation, and ignoring distinguishing between outdated and more current views. It seems more suitable to focus on contemporary thinking on inflation causes in academic circles and central banks, presenting earlier historical debates on the matter in a subsection clearly marked as such. Also, the section lacks citations in many places, and some information, like the subsection "Profiteering under consolidation", seems to receive somewhat undue attention. Økonom (talk) 10:51, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

+1 to @Økonom recomendation, I am going to put a tag on this section -- its really messy and doesn't reflect some of the biggest actual causes as experienced by consumers (i.e. when a war causes price change) or the growing threat of climate change to cause effects, like the drought in Panama caused by climate change effecting supply chains, Sadads (talk) 12:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Bad or incomplete sentence in "corruption" heading

In the article under Effects > Negative > Corruption, we read:

  According to the Global Labor Organization (GLO), a global sample of 1.5 million observations during the 1999 and 2012 found a negative relationship of ECB unemployment between countries of Spain, Ireland, Greece, and Portugal a financial crisis. 

This isn't a well-formed sentence, and it isn't easy to see how to fix it. I guess I could delete it. 24.23.150.90 (talk) 23:42, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that this whole paragraph has multiple issues. It doesn't directly mention corruption, or say how corruption results from inflation. Its argument (if it has one) is difficult to follow, and its tone is not neutral. 1.42.161.207 (talk) 02:22, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Inflation

Which inflation category does Bhutan fall under? 160.30.185.77 (talk) 12:50, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Actual Definition of and Cause of Inflation

Inflation is caused by government increasing the supply of money, by printing bills and coin and working them into the economy. The more money is in circulation, the less it's worth. Higher prices frequently appear when true inflation hits. Higher prices, availability of credit, increased utility costs,etc. are SYMPTOMS of inflation, not causes. 216.8.46.221 (talk) 22:26, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

The definition in the article is incorrect. Inflation is an increase in general prices, which is often caused by increases in the money supply. The whole article is written witht this is mind (see sentence 2 of terminology), and the disambiguation page for inflation, any of the references to the second sentences corroborate this. The two most popular grad-level macro books I know of, Romer and Ljungqvist & Sargent both use this defintion, and any number of more accessible texts will agree. Critical thinking reveals that CPI doesn't even measure the size of the money supply, and the definition of disinflation as the opposite also is inconsistent with the given definition. Notice also, we have a separate article for Monetary Inlfation, and Price Inflation redirects to this article.

In truth, I've never contributed to wikipedia, and don't know what it entails, but given the importance of this article, if nobody wishes to do the work I should be doing in getting this fixed, or my view proves controversial, I'll get more involved. 118.208.160.182 (talk) 05:55, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. Increase in money supply is only one factor and should not be the whole definition. 159.18.26.96 (talk) 16:31, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

"In economics, inflation is an increase in the money supply."

How the hell was this allowed to become the first sentence (or really, any sentence) in the article? 152.19.225.163 (talk) 16:00, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I have seen a lot of heterodox pop-economics online which pushes the idea that inflation is defined incorrectly. Of course, the idea that monetary inflation itself is more important than inflation is a point that could be made, if one wished to somehow defend it, but serious heterodox economists will not argue about the definition, and a redefinition is certainly not neccessary to advocate for a conservative/hands-off monetary approach. I cannot help but wonder if the edit was made with ideological goals, it will be interesting to see if similar edits happen again. 118.208.160.182 (talk) 03:31, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I joined Wikipedia back in 2006 and one thing I remember from around that time was regular and quite determined attempts to misrepresent the fundamental nature of inflation in this article, deliberately seeking to confuse it with monetary inflation. It is definitely ideological although it may not always represent bad faith on the part of the editor. Some American kids are probably being taught this nonsense in homeschooling material or even in schools now. Hell, some of them may even be the kids of the people who were pushing that line on here back in 2006. Anyway, it seems weird that this article no longer links to monetary inflation. Doing so might help people to realise that the topic they are interested in already has an article but it's not this one. --DanielRigal (talk) 05:16, 13 March 2025 (UTC)