Bouncing off this, the only thing worse than inflation is deflation because it means your stuff is worth less than what you paid for it. Money itself is a commodity used to transfer debt. The use-value of a commodity is where its real value is located. Money is just a way of tracking who is currently liable for what in the production chain.
When money deflates, its use-value as a debt tracker hasn’t changed. Only its exchange-value. This debt is held by anyone currently in possession of the money and whoever is at the end of the production chain. This is usually the worker, who traded their labor for wages and are now consumers buying commodities to transfer the debt (money) back to manufacturers. Any possessions held by workers and any means of production have gone down in exchange-value, while their use-value remains the same (or has declined due to normal wear and tear).
During inflation, the opposite effect happens where the debt held by workers is worth less than the use-value of commodities. This means workers benefit from releasing their debt (AKA spending money) and acquiring commodities they want or need. In capitalist nations, runaway inflation occurs faster than workers’ wages deliberately as the bourgeois holds the majority of the nation’s wealth both in terms of the means of production and money in possession. This allows them to have riskier behavior as they are incentivized to liquidate their money in search of commodities they can use to generate more passive income.
Bouncing off this, the only thing worse than inflation is deflation because it means your stuff is worth less than what you paid for it. Money itself is a commodity used to transfer debt. The use-value of a commodity is where its real value is located. Money is just a way of tracking who is currently liable for what in the production chain.
When money deflates, its use-value as a debt tracker hasn’t changed. Only its exchange-value. This debt is held by anyone currently in possession of the money and whoever is at the end of the production chain. This is usually the worker, who traded their labor for wages and are now consumers buying commodities to transfer the debt (money) back to manufacturers. Any possessions held by workers and any means of production have gone down in exchange-value, while their use-value remains the same (or has declined due to normal wear and tear).
During inflation, the opposite effect happens where the debt held by workers is worth less than the use-value of commodities. This means workers benefit from releasing their debt (AKA spending money) and acquiring commodities they want or need. In capitalist nations, runaway inflation occurs faster than workers’ wages deliberately as the bourgeois holds the majority of the nation’s wealth both in terms of the means of production and money in possession. This allows them to have riskier behavior as they are incentivized to liquidate their money in search of commodities they can use to generate more passive income.