• SCB@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What you learned in high school puts you miles ahead of 99% of these comments

    • TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      People still have to spend money, hoarding wealth makes no sense if you can’t eat and pay for services and utilities.

      • krakenx@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The idea is that deflation affects the investor class. Assuming a “healthy” 3% inflation rate, the value of your savings decreases by 3% per year. That means you lose money if you can’t invest in something earning more than 3%. Traditionally interest rates have been around 0%, which means bonds and savings accounts also pay 0%. So, your only options to not lose the value of your savings is to invest in the stock market, risky businesses, or real estate.

        As a middle class person that means that it mostly affects my 401k, but for millionaires and billionaires, deflation means that they would sit on their hoard instead of investing it. Traditionally that means no funding for new businesses, inventions and ideas, and that’s also why the investor class pays much lower taxes than the working classes.

        But nowadays “investment” seems to mostly be buying good companies and enshitifying them or bribing politicians, so maybe it would be better if we encouraged the rich to sit on their money instead of using it to make society worse.