Mature Life Features

. . . while waiting for breakfast the other morning,

where do they get the seeds

to plant for seedless watermelon?

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Inflation is a Four-Letter Word

There’s a lot of talk about inflation these days.

No one can pin point its cause nor can they really explain what it means. One generally accepted description is “Too Much Money Chasing Too Few Goods.” An economic term describes it as a general increase in prices and a fall in the purchasing power of money.

How ever you say it, it means things cost more than they used to while your money’s purchasing power has declined.

But just because the price of air fare goes up because everyone’s going on vacation doesn’t mean we’re being hit by inflation.

Money mavins are interested more in why prices rise. A rainy season can ruin a crop, boosting its price until regular seasonal supply can resume. Supply-chain breakdowns can cause sudden but short-lived surges in the price of certain products.

Those events are not to be confused with inflation.

Money supply is important, but so is the demand for money. If you lose confidence in the future of your currency, you’re likely to seek something else that will maintain its power to purchase what you need and want. Dumping dollars for gold and silver is one common practice, as is buying another country’s currency.

Like so many economic theories and multi-syllabic words, inflation is not easy to define.

When prices rise when consumers change their behavior or supply chains get snarled, that’s not inflation. But when prices climb because there’s a shift in the supply of and demand for money, that’s when inflation starts to become a problem.

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