because CPI wasn't a redefinition of a "useful concept, one which if forgotten would leave people unable to understand critical dynamics of fiat currency systems".
Again, the economic understanding of fiat currency hasn't been lost.
Despite the best efforts of subversive attempts, as my insistence on using the correct definition and the general public's awareness of the problem demonstrate.
Inflation was commonly measured as the rise in prices, so there was some utility in using a definition corresponding to what was being measured.
That's like saying pressure is often measured by the gravity force of a liquid metal, so there was some utility in using a definition corresponding to what was being measured.
Oh wait, they kinda do, mm of mercury.
Now what would happen if they were to start calling space a "low mercury environment", and then some sad product of the American education system said that we need to bring liquid mercury to the moon so we can breathe.
That is the OP, except it wasn't some accident, he was told this non-sense by people acting to subvert the definition of inflation.
If anything, this is less misleading, since the old definition could lead people to assume that something other than the price of goods was being measured.
IT WAS!
Just like the height of the mercury column was measuring something else: pressure.
Uniformly rising prices is the effect, inflating money supply is the cause. CPI is a proxy for inflation. Inflation is what theoretically needs to be known by the national banks to know whether to print more money. When you say just "inflation" that means the part of the increase in prices caused by inflation, which is in theory and on average: the only cause.
In their original theory (which they modified in order to accommodate establishment desire for more theft) inflation should be zero. A fiat currency with stable value, that would require some increase in money supply.
See how the concept of "money supply" is not identical to "inflation" nor is "increasing money supply" identical to "inflation"?
You can increase the money supply without causing inflation, when the increase is proportional to the actual increase in value*transactions per unit time.
but living standards are generally going up in the long term.
Yet dips are correlated with inflation.
From the instant the scheme of national fiat currency was invented it became a tool for shadow taxation and since then every government under any kind of stress self-inflicted or not has used it to hide and diffuse the amount they steal.
That stealing does reduce quality of life. Read vampire economy. The nazis were waging war on half the world, throwing vast resources into it, resources they stole; through inflation.
Those who would subvert the concepts of sound economics pretend as if these are alternative explanations, war OR printing money.
Putin did it, he started a war. <not mentioned> which then 'forced' the US government to print trillions to give to Ukraine by giving them weapons bought with those trillions of printed dollars very inefficiently compounding the theft </not mentioned>
Covid didn't make the prices go up, the shut down followed by the government trying to 'stimulate' the economy by stealing from everyone via printing money thereby causing inflation.
The lie is connecting shifts in the supply/demand equilibrium with inflation. Wars and diseases can certainly cause shifts in the supply/demand equilibrium; but wars are not inflation. Price changes are not inflation unless they are caused by printing money, and that HAS been what has been causing them when the government uses printing money to steal whatever the reason.
For example if Putin blew up a pipeline (actually it was "the good guys") that would explain a loss of supply for oil. Not for Spanish pears, for oil. That is neither a CPI increase nor inflation.
I claim countries die from hyperinflation. Which is a particular form of government theft.
After a variant of a disease is named, there is no honest reason to change the name.
Are tariffs not government theft too then? It's a direct tax on consumers that makes them have to pay more.
They are definitely taxes and thus theft, not directly on the consumer (almost none of which have the first clue about importing) though so I don't know why you would say that.
A particularly inefficient form of theft, too, because of how much deadweight loss it incurs.
Define efficiency in this context.
Taxation and direct destruction of the means of production can increase some prices, but in that case the price of labor goes down until a critical point after which the black market becomes the only means of survival and which prices mean nothing.
Tariffs don't always make the price of labor go down.
They don't always make the price go up either. They can change behavior and thus shift the supply/demand curve drastically which means there are no absolute predictions, just a few absolute facts:
When the government ends up with more real wealth in their hands, and they threatened force to get it; they stole that wealth and they're almost certainly going to waste it either in stupendously poorly executed activities or straight up corruption (almost always a hybrid of the two).
This is, on the grand scale, the equivalent to coming into a prosperous town, making a big pile of their finest products: pies, pots, pottery, paintings, clothing; and then setting it on fire.
That reduces quality of life, and if it happens too often and the destruction is too great, the people become impoverished to the point of desperation. When a government uses inflation as the means of theft there is no escape, the destruction continues till the final crumb of bread, with people carrying around paper currency in wheelbarrows.
With tariffs, on-the books international trade simply ceases. In that way tariffs are less dangerous than inflation. Tariffs can at worst reduce you to total economic isolation. Inflation can go all the way back to the stone age if you actually have the guards to prevent people from switching to barter.
And even if they did, tariffs don't always force huge black markets. They don't tend to be this broad anyway.
That's because it's rare for an import to be a true staple, something people are willing to risk imprisonment for.
You put a tariff up inside your own economy (called sales tax), that will force a black market if it's bad enough. Or if there is truly a necessary import, such as an island that can't produce its own food; there will be a black market or there will be blood.
It would be misleading if we said inflation was the cost of goods but only measured the money supply.
Yes it would, it's the increase in the cost of goods CAUSED by the excess increase in the money supply.
Since what inflation is called and what is being measured are the same thing, it's not misleading.
?
What inflation is called? You mean inflation?
"Since inflation and what is being measured are the same thing, it's not misleading."
Well I would accept that with some caveats about time, in the short term CPIs can fluctuate, but ONLY inflation is a permanent increase in the general prices.
The problem is the equivocation of inflation with any increase in prices whatsoever, and by extension any cause for increase in prices; tariffs for example cannot be inflationary and cannot over a long period change the CPI if they were magically uniform (which they can't be).
In other words this is one of the rare instances where people's shallow understanding is actually exactly right, they are calling "all the prices are going up" "inflation" and that is exactly what it is even if they don't generally understand why. It's not open taxation, it's not war, it's not disease; it's money printing. That is the only explanation and it is the scientifically confirmed cause.
Terms used for different things have adjusted
Then what is the new term for inflation? We've established that it isn't "money supply" nor "increase in money supply".
Is this new term on the lips of every citizen when they shake their heads at the totals in stores? If the answer is "no" that would mean the subversion has succeeded because that IS the cause of that bottom number going up and up and up.
