America needs a class war

So yes, those are all reasons why we need a class war — a policy-, protest-, and rhetoric-focused conflict in which America’s downtrodden middle and bottom rise up against the gluttonous elite. But there’s another key reason why I want to revive the great populist cause of the good old days: inflation.

There is no neutral monetary policy. There will be a certain quantity of money in the economy. What that quantity is will advantage certain people over others. This is why monetary policy was once a vigorous and important part of our political debates.

If you have extremes (zero inflation, high inflation), everybody hurts. But inside those extremes, broadly speaking, if you have less inflation, the rich benefit; if you have more inflation, the less-rich benefit. It’s not just that too-stable prices benefit creditors at the expense of debtors. It’s that a burst of inflation reshuffles the economic cards. It creates economic instability — and those who have the most to lose from instability are those who have economic security. To put it very simply and very sharply: Too-stable prices are a transfer from the poor to the rich.