I think that there is something wrong with this list. How can a country have a inflation level of 200,000%? Inflation is a very serious issue which ultimatelt affect the lower class. What do you think is the main reason for the world Inflation? Who do you blame for it?
Is that a joke... obviously central banks....they print and we get diluted ... How can you possibly believe anything else
So Venezuela's inflation level is well known and well documented. If you're really interested in the questions you ask, I highly recommend you subscribe to something like the WSJ, or Barron's if you only have time for once a week, and read them pretty religiously. At the same time, once you've graduated from high school at the very least take some economics classes at your community college or some free MOOCs, you may be able to do both while still in school. The answers to your questions require some background to understand. Like most complex things in the world they don't yield to simplistic explanations, but it's not quantum physics either so given some intellectual curiosity and some effort it's easy to come to the point where you both understand the background and are up to date on what's going on in the world.
Really? Where can I find data to support this? Where I live, my cost of housing, food, gas... went up a lot more than the quoted ~2% to 3% the past few years.
Where is it that you live, so we can provide data (country). Funny that you mention data, because the human brain has a funny way of selective memory when it comes to "I remember when you could buy a candy bar for a nickel" kind of stuff and really can't be trusted at all. So if you look at the actual data you may be surprised. Take the average price of gas in the U.S. (https://www.statista.com/statistics...f-gasoline-in-the-united-states-since-1990/#0) It's been below $2.50 for the last several years, but was above $3.50 for several years in the last decade. And before you go there, even if your gas isn't that cheap, if you looked at the actual published data for your area (if you're in the U .S.) you would see that the current price of your gas is lower than the price was for several years of the last decade. And yes, energy prices are highly volatile and not the best gauge of inflation, I use that example specifically because you listed it and because it so clearly demonstrates the human brain limitation I'm describing. We can go item by item through everything from computers to furniture you buy at Walmart and we'll see that on average we get the same results, in fact a very large group of statisticians whose only job is to do exactly that nicely publish the results of that data for us at https://www.bls.gov/cpi/# and you can drill down all the way to the prices of specific items. Memory's a tricky little sucker, especially when it comes to things we like to gripe about like how much stuff costs. In addition, you personally may be exposed to higher costs because you now choose to shop at Target instead of Walmart, for example or buy higher end food, or because you choose to live in the Bay Area and rent instead of buy, or any number of decisions the that follow many Americans' rise in standard of living as they advance through life. Which leads to another little fault in human brains where we tend to extrapolate our own experience to be representative of everyone's experience, but subject for another post.
You may very well be correct and it is just a look by someone with a very narrow view. That said, do you have: 1. Data that supported a 3% inflation is not harmful to the citizens and the economy? 2. Data on inflation for Southern California? Cost of houses, rent, food, transportations, all seemed to outpace 3%? Thanks.
The "right" inflation rate is something that smart, well meaning people can discuss forever and I'm not sure there is a knowable answer in the 1-5% range. There is pretty good evidence that deflation is very harmful to any economy because of the significant disincentive to invest in anything, but even that rule has a huge counterargument in tech, which in terms of price to buy a given performance suffers from massive deflation. There's pretty good evidence that inflation above 10% is damaging because of the amplifying delayed feedback loop of wage and price increases. Is 3% is harmful? It may be over time to an individual who is at the low end of the wage scale, in an industry where pay lags that inflation and unskilled with no options to move to another, and is hit by things like having to rent. To your typical lower middle class and higher there's pretty universal acceptance amongst economists that 3% is a nearly perfect inflation rate. There's also almost universal acceptance that this rate is nearly perfect for the economy writ large, which if we were a compassionate society means we would have more than enough left over to help the small part of our society that is impacted by an inflation rate that is superior for the economy overall. The CPI is actually broken down by region per the link I provided. I lived in the Bay area twice for a total of 7 years, also insanely expensive. I would submit, however, that there's a difference between insanely expensive and inflation higher than the rest of the country. It was insanely expensive when I first arrived in 1998, it's still insanely expensive, but I'm not sure the rate of increase in expense in percentage terms is much higher than anywhere else, it's just way higher in absolute dollar terms. Three percent of a $1M house is a heck of a lot bigger than 3% of a $100K house. Again, gas as an example, it was crazy expensive there from when I first moved, but it's not terribly more expensive now there than it was then. Housing may be the big exception to that in CA. However even housing even in the Bay Area is highly dependent on your personal choices. If I had purchased a house in 1998, my monthly payments for housing would have inflated at a rate of zero over the last 20 years. There were plenty of people making half of what I was living in houses several orders of magnitude better than I could afford because they owned and I rented. So if you're looking at the average inflation impact in housing, it was significantly smaller than the inflation impact I personally was seeing. All that said though, I wouldn't be surprised if inflation in CA was higher than inflation in the rest of the country.
Well, when I said, "inflation below 3 % is fine indefinitely." I am was referring to something that should be true in general, but wouldn't be true in specific individual cases. For example if a person's income does not increase at all with inflation eventually they will be destitute. They won't be "fine"! Also, disruptions can occur internally within an economy, and externally too in a global economy, that make it difficult for the Central Bank in conjunction with the Treasury to maintain their target inflation rate. The remark I made comes out of, and I believe is consistent with, what's called modern modern theory, or MMT, which is the theory of fiat money.
I think inflation exist to keep the people under control through a wealth gap. Inflation is needed for growth and to make up for interest rate and tight labour. Interest rate and inflation can not exist without each other. The reason why banks have interest rate, is to recover time value lost through inflation. That is how banks make most of their money. Without inflation, how would the justify charging rate? The current monetary system is based on growth, inflation and rates, which need debt to exist. Perfect sense if you are a bank. So that is why we need inflation for what I understand... and rate... and poverty.