Inflation Is Always and Everywhere a Decline In Money Values
John Tamny of Forbes Seeking to provide clarity as to the true meaning of inflation, the late Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman helpfully described it as “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” At first glance Friedman’s definition is hard to improve…
John Tamny of Forbes
Seeking to provide clarity as to the true meaning of inflation, the late Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman helpfully described it as “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” At first glance Friedman’s definition is hard to improve on–from post-WWI Germany to the 1970s in the United States and modern-day Zimbabwe, inflation has always been a monetary symptom of collapsing currency values.
The problem, however, is that Friedman was actually defining something quite different. In the monetarist model that he practiced, money growth beyond a pre-set point was inflation. Friedman’s point was that money quantities themselves always told the inflationary tale. But did they?
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