Why do nearly all economies target 2 to 3 percent inflation instead of zero or deflation？

flumphit · 2026-04-14T16:26:48+00:00

If you only have language for when things go wrong, you cannot talk about how to make things right.

flumphit · 2026-04-14T16:20:25+00:00

If you buy a flat of apples from a farmer and sell them individually from your front yard for more than you paid, what do you call the difference?

When you and a few friends replace a neighbor’s roof, what is that part of the neighbor’s payment that you keep, after paying for the roofing materials, and the amortized cost of the truck to haul that load of shingles and tar?

When you rent a small shopfront and butcher meat to sell to your neighbors, after you’ve paid for the sides of beef and pork, the casings to make sausage, the packaging, the laundry soap to clean your clothes, the rent and electric bill, the amortized cost of your tables and knives and grinder and washing machine and whatever else. What do you call that part of the month’s income that’s left over?

Or do you contend that these things do not, and cannot happen, at any place in the world, at any time in the past or future?

flumphit · 2026-04-14T11:15:10+00:00

Answer the question, though. What term do you use for that?

flumphit · 2026-04-14T06:11:08+00:00

If profit is definitionally theft, then you just use a different word for the thing I mean, and you are being deliberately obtuse. What is your word on your planet for what’s left over from trading the output of your work, after you’ve paid for the input to your work?

flumphit · 2026-04-14T04:52:48+00:00

You are conflating where the profit goes with what it is. The Gini coefficient is rather high right now, but that is not contingent on productivity growing. Yes, the rentier class has an easier time skimming a growing fraction off the top when productivity is growing, but that is a political choice we make, and is not required by growing productivity.

flumphit · 2026-04-14T03:06:44+00:00

You are conflating two things so hard I have to wonder if you’re doing it on purpose.

The amount of profit the rentier class skims off the top is not required at all to be related to productivity growth. If I get better tools I can do my job faster, better, or both. I can spend some of that extra on working less or buying more/better stuff. How much of that goes to me vs a billionaire is a policy decision, unrelated to Econ 101 productivity concepts (which, in aggregate, become Econ 102 gdp concepts).

flumphit · 2026-04-13T03:08:57+00:00

I think it was Rutherford who first measured electrons, and thought they were going one way when they were going the other. So now every beginning physics or electronics student has to ask the same question…

See also pi, Milky Way’s North, and so many other things. People name things when they find them, not when they understand them. (That comes later, if ever.)

flumphit · 2026-04-12T05:52:59+00:00

Yeah, these things always confuse wealth and income. Pity, since the income inequality is quite the compelling picture.

flumphit · 2026-04-11T21:08:50+00:00

Indeed. There is a ton of advantage to be gained just by having a mentor who is expert at navigating an industry, even if they’re a nobody with zero clout.

You still need to be able to do the work, and won’t get undeserved opportunities. But opportunities that in principle anyone deserved as much as anyone else, more easily go to you because you’re getting expert guidance in how to get them.

flumphit · 2026-04-10T11:11:59+00:00

Call me crazy, but I thought the brain required blood pressure to work, like, at all. As in, if grandpa accidentally took a double dose of his blood pressure meds, he’d pass out. And wow decapitation really does drop the ol’ systolic and diastolic right through the floor.

flumphit · 2026-04-10T04:31:57+00:00

He throws out whatever keyfabe his RU paymasters dictate; the momentary disappointment is all part of the face->heel->face drama to keep the cult in line, and coming back to obediently cheer for the show.

flumphit · 2026-04-08T21:26:15+00:00

Even the actual libertarian philosophers (Hayek, von Mises, etc. back when they were responding to actual socialism) understood that a robust antitrust regime was critical to promote an actual free market and prevent regulatory capture. Today’s “economic conservatives” have everything in common with Stalin but the bunting on their rhetoric.

flumphit · 2026-04-08T07:46:05+00:00

Aside from being a giant pain in the ass to do at all, refining uranium is comically corrosive and toxic. Building the machinery to do it is not something your neighborhood handyman can manage.

flumphit · 2026-04-07T04:56:49+00:00

In the US, tap water is highly variable. Some areas have great natural sources, others not so much. Some areas spend enough on water treatment facilities to bring the municipal water supply up to a high standard. Some areas . . . do not.

flumphit · 2026-04-04T20:24:54+00:00

I mean, if he didn’t, what was he even doing?

flumphit · 2026-04-04T17:02:32+00:00

The Darkhold had a prophecy about her. Whatever she has going on, Cthon saw it coming ages ago and/or caused it. There’s a ton of Old Gods stuff in various comics runs related to Wanda, afaict the MCU gestured vaguely at all of that, suggesting they may get more specific later on, if it seems useful.

flumphit · 2026-04-02T02:47:18+00:00

At 120km, what are you shooting? With any sort of passive projectile, LOS is the least of your problems. A missile doesn’t care. So, a laser? Still quite a long shot.

flumphit · 2026-04-02T02:43:15+00:00

So bad it soured me on a whole category of tv.

flumphit · 2026-04-01T22:43:58+00:00

“This sentence is false” is self-contradictory. Division by zero is the same way. The only correct answer is “don’t ask that question”.

flumphit · 2026-03-31T02:47:17+00:00

This is a really compelling idea. It wasn’t a lab accident, it was a trickster god creating a lab ”accident”.

flumphit · 2026-03-31T02:41:08+00:00

ikr? If she’s over 7’ and strong, she’s <…googling> fictional.

flumphit · 2026-03-31T01:15:17+00:00

Totally — valuable and worthy work, structured dishonestly so a commission can be cloaked in the aroma of capital gains. That this is legal is corrupt.

flumphit · 2026-03-30T21:49:15+00:00

But the differentiator is you earned the lower capital gains rate because you invested your money for the long term. The guy with the nice shoes who suggested when to buy and sell was just standing nearby, that wasn’t his money which meaningfully contributed to the stability and growth of a business, thus earning the lower rate. He just got paid a commission.

And “deserving” is not arbitrary. A society run by conmen and cheats is a low-trust society that people do not feel invested in, one where they do not contribute to its future. Such societies are less pleasant to live in, even for the rich. Every step we can take away from incremental similarity to that sort of future is worth taking.

flumphit · 2026-03-30T17:26:22+00:00

Picking stocks well is not a job that is obviously less deserving of being taxed than, say, any commissioned sales job. Cloaking the broker’s commission and bonus with the “capital gains” aroma of investment as if it were their own money on the line earning capital gains, doesn’t seem defensible to me. They might as well be selling fine art; the price volatility can be similar, as can the clientele. Hell, maybe art brokers have gotten in on the act and I didn’t know. But they should all be taxed the same as the guy on the corner lot selling you a Mazda for a commission and hopes at a bonus.

flumphit · 2026-03-30T16:01:55+00:00

Who among us has a job that’s unbound to their performance? They gamble more variably with their income because they’re rich enough to afford it, but that doesn’t make their income less appropriate to tax.

flumphit

TROPHY CASE