With democracy on the ballot, the mainstream press must change its ways

psychothumbs@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 318 points –
With democracy on the ballot, the mainstream press must change its ways | Margaret Sullivan
theguardian.com
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Nothing any government can do will undo the high inflation of 2022. Deflation must be avoided, because while consumer prices would go back down, the main effect of long-term deflation is that everybody stops investing and starts saving. Why would I buy new tools now when I can wait for tomorrow and get them cheaper then? When the entire economy does that, it shrinks. Catastrophic for capitalism. Prices are what they are, they've stopped going up, can't realistically wish for more.

Furthermore to blame high inflation on the Biden administration shows a complete lack of journalistic integrity. Like blaming the '08 crisis on Obama. Both were worldwide events which, if the US weren't so god-damn self-centered, anyone could realize were just as bad or even worse in other developed countries. In 2022 most of the Eurozone was well above US inflation levels (without going too technical, the US Fed had more leeway to much more aggressively raise interest rates to reign in inflation, which it did successfully).

Now there is plenty of blame to be passed around for a lot of specific economic policy items that impact cost-of-living (wages, housing, student debt, etc.). Inflation isn't one of them.

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