If you get the average person all hot and bothered about political problems you will almost certainly hear a few repeated and common complaints. Here are the ones I always run into:Banks. The financial system is cheating us. They have committed fraud and have taken retirements and so on. Our financial system needs to be put in check and its time we band together and get the government to do something about it.Poverty. Poor people keep getting poorer, businesses do everything they can to pay people absolutely nothing at every opportunity. They are racist and hate the little guy and lobby endlessly to keep the minimum wage at a point where the impoverished are always in need. Its time the government stepped in and raised the minimum wage so that we can fix this problem and get the poor the wages they deserve.High prices. The market is so evil! Prices are always going up and it hurts everyone. Housing and education prices keep going up so fast that no one can afford them. Its hurting our country and preventing people from getting the homes and the education they need to live a comfortable, fulfilling life. Its time the government did something to make them more affordable and put the evil price risers in check!I hear these arguments incessantly and what is so extraordinary is that the very second I suggest that our money contributes to every one of these problems their story immediately shifts 180ºSo my response is generally a much less direct and more appealing version of this:Me=1. Well the government and the central bank have monopolized a system in which new money is created as loans and pushed into the market. This has the effect of heavily subsidizing the financial markets where the new money floods in before price inflation has decreased its value. Its basically a legal system of counterfeiting at a known ratio in order to allow it, but obscure and slow its effects.Me=2. Inflation causes minimum wage to be less and less valuable over time, meaning that raising the MW only kicks the can down the road a few years. This affects the poor to the greatest degree and hurts any opportunity they have to save for the future by siphoning off the value of their earnings over time. It also has the effect of increased inequality. With the political privilege to create money out of nothing and then charge interest on it, you end up with a system in which the entire economy can go into debt at multiples of its entire productivity. How can someone loan out 2,000 wooden boards when only 400 exist? That is essentially what happens in the financial markets and it runs the consequence of creating a huge boom/bust cycle.Me=3. The constantly rising prices are a consequence of an endlessly increasing money supply and not the fault of some business. Businesses have no fantastical power to control prices anymore than you can manipulate prices on craigslist. Ever wonder why those things funded almost solely by debt - housing, education, cars, medical, and so on all experience inflation rates that dwarf other industries?Money is a tool for measurement. Printing money to create wealth is similar to changing the length of a foot on your tape measure so you can get a bigger house.Then comes the responses! This is where I'm totally baffled. They defend all of these measures with a fury that is sometimes frightening.CONSPIRACY THEORIST!! Inflation and loans are a GOOD thing! We just need the government to stop the banks from doing bad things! If we didn't have inflation then DEFLATIONARY SPIRAL (note: literally never happened before ever in the history of mankind, a completely and utterly made up economic problem)! People would sit on money forever which hurts everyone and then they would all get rich doing nothing!Inflation GOOD! Deflationary spiral!! Rich would be so worse if we didn't have the banks and government printing money out of thin air to help the poor! Banks don't benefit from the ability to create loans from nothing, only people who cant afford houses benefit! Boom/bust is always there. The Fed has basically cured them... except the Great Depression because evil business and the constant boom/busts we have also cuz evil markets. But remember the 1800s and how bad they were then!? I remember because I was there!Inflation GOOD! Businesses don't have to charge higher prices and wouldn't if they were good people instead of evil scum-fucks! If we didn't force them to invest by inflation they would sit on their massive piles of cash and laugh as everyone drowned in their own fecal matter!!I was just wondering if anyone had any clever ideas or arguments that made this simpler to understand. I've had very mild success but I keep going at it since I actually want these problems solved. But they have this huge disconnect between an obvious thing like printing money decreases the money's value, Which they openly admit and claim is desirable. But then its like the subsequent financial system bloating, ever higher prices, and worsening poverty could not ever have anything to do with this directly related and foundational manipulation? Manipulation that is done specifically to cause higher prices by pushing new money into the financial markets. It just seems so shockingly obvious. via /r/Bitcoin http://bit.ly/29bQ4Rb
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