This is going to be my last reply on this topic, because I can see where the discussion is headed. In the past, I've argued with people espousing similarly hard monetarist/Austrian views, and it's my experience that they never know when to stop digging (except for gold-depositing purposes -- thanks COLA!)
Inflation refers to a rise in the general price level of goods or services, or put differently, in the loss of purchasing power with respect to a given basket of goods. The precise basket you choose is up to you. In the UK, we have several indices such as CPI and RPI which serve as
general measures. These factor items such as mortgage and interest expenditures to varying degrees; hence, different indices are used by different parties for different purposes.
It's quite coherent, then, to talk about price inflation in one industry. If the term 'healthcare inflation' is good enough for the
Chicago Fed to use in its research papers, it's good enough for me.
I wonder why you take issue with inflation existing in specific industries, and not just as a general level within an economy...?
... Ah, that's why!
Statements like this were considered fundamentalist in 1979, and in 2019, they are positively
eccentric. If you genuinely believe that the rate of monetary growth or the size of the monetary base(s) best describe the rates of inflation in stable, developed countries like the US, then I can only think that you've had no formal education in economics.
As a side note: You may be interested to know that even Friedman (he whose "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" line you retooled) had, by the end of his career, become contrite about his strong exclusion of other inflationary factors. I've spent a decade in the economics field, and I know of no serious economist on the right (even the monetarist right!) who argues what you have.
US federal deficit spending is funded principally through sovereign debt issue. What you've instead described is something called seigniorage, and in no meaningful way is it the method by which the US government balances its books. Naturally, you've glossed over the complex relationship between the dollar monetary base and (i) the petrodollar effect, (ii) international distribution factors, (iii) the Treasury and Fed's yield/seigniorage/inflation rate trade-off -- and so, I will too.
And? The same has been true of National Insurance in the UK for about 50 years... The question is not whether the revenue feeds into a common pot, it's whether that pot is big enough...?
Not without the yields on government debt soaring, making new issuance infeasible. So no, Congress will not do that. You act as if the process were frivolous... Presumably because you imagine that deficit funding comes from turning on the printing presses.
I've already explained how inflation is
not the way deficits are financed in your country or mine, but I'll also add that no serious economist wishes to see debt issuance end
even if the broader deficit were eliminated.
After all, sovereign debt has substantial economic purposes beyond financing government spending -- if you are interested in learning about them, I suggest buying an introductory macroeconomics textbook.
Those possibilities were very real to people who didn't know what they were talking about, like Ron Paul. To still be foretelling disaster
10 years later suggests paranoid tendencies, or perhaps that you've watched too many YouTube videos with titles like "
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FED" and "
RON PAUL SAYS BUY GOLD 2012".
US
real income growth is positive, inflation is low, and unemployment is at its lowest level in decades. Let's keep that in mind, yeah?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'flat tax on the poor' -- presumably that inflation acts like a regressive value-added tax? And what effects on spending and savings rate would a zero inflation or zero public debt environment produce? Do you believe they are positive for the poor?
There is, thus far, no real research consensus on the effects of the low interest environment on consumer spending behaviours. Note that the bubbles you appear to be referring to existed in the pre-Crash higher interest rate environment and were larger.
How is that possible? Well, in truth, much of the old wisdom about savings/investment behaviour, (real) interest rates and inflation has broken down since QE -- but to your over-aching complaint, none of this was in the service of financing government spending.
... In any event, I'm on this forum to laugh at fat audiophiles and deer molesters, so I'll leave it there.