China's Xi Jinping asked 'What’s so bad about deflation?' amid economic slowdown, report says
"Don’t people like it when things are cheaper?" Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly asked his advisers.
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Deflation is a great thing.
The working class has been conditioned to think it's "bad" and inflation is "inevitable" because inflation is how the ruling class recoups any gains the working class has made, with interest.
Personally, I think it goes a bit deeper than this. Insecure people always want to feel they "know" everything, so they will often overreach and make claims about something they don't understand just to look smart and fit in. For example, always using the word "consumer" instead of "customer." They want to sound smart, like they went to school and learned about consumers, but they don't realize how they're acting without thinking. It's all a show to avoid admitting they don't really know what they're talking about.
Inflation is the same. Since it's almost guaranteed to happen and it benefits the ruling class, the average worker has been conditioned to see it as beneficial. They are praised for going along with the narrative that inflation is necessary and it makes them "feel smart" even if they are incorrect.
Saying "communism doesn't work" is another example.
aren't you doing the thing you are criticizing? because to me you are trying to sound like you know everything as well.
Yes that comment is 5% saying something and 95% shitting on unnamed people in an attempt to claim elite knowledge.
Nah. I'm not trying to fit in, which you seem to have conveniently ignored.
I could be wrong, but the evidence points to inflation being a result of the working class having more spending power. It means that no matter what gains the working class makes, the ruling class will take them back with interest.
If you think this is incorrect, feel free to say why.
You’re making it sound like wage growth always perfectly balances with inflation. It doesn’t. Regular people get fucked when wage growth falls behind price growth, but they benefit if wage growth outpaces inflation, which it sometimes does. This means that inflation is not some ever present gotcha that always keeps the people down. It’s one factor in the equation.
On another point, can you explain why you think inflation benefits the ruling class, and deflation benefits the working class? Because you never explained this which gives the appearance that it’s based entirely on “when prices go up, ruling class win,” which is not always the case.
you should go to China and ask average Chinese people about how they feel about their "cheap groceries".
wealth inequality is a huge problem, and attribute it to inflation is naive. the rich has power in a capitalistic society, they will win no matter we are in an inflationary or deflationary economy. to think deflation will be good for the working people is very naive.
Wealth inequality exists in China, but is in most areas declining or rising at a slower rate than peer countries. The PRC relatively recently completed a decade-long poverty eradication campaign, to great results. China isn't a wonderland, but it's improving far more rapidly than practically anywhere else currently.
sure, but that is because of rigorous government policies that came out of a herculean effort to eradicate poverty, not because of deflation like the comment i was replying to is trying to claim. if you look like China's inflation rate, it hovered ~2% for the past decade which is comparable to the US.
“In most areas” is a very big cheat on this data though. With a great deal of wealth concentrated in the 1%, you can’t just leave out the 1% as an outlier and say that aside from them, things are pretty equal.
China’s wealth inequality overall has skyrocketed and is staggering, both because of its growing number of explosively wealthy, and the utter impoverishment of a large part of the population.
You're at least a decade out of date, extreme poverty has been eradicated even according to the world bank, and I am not excluding the 1% here. Working class salaries have risen dramatically, the disparity has risen but the real conditions for the overwhelming majority of people have dramatically improved. Disparity is a problem, yes, but it isn't a simple one, I recommend the essay China Has Billionaires.
Overall, though, your notions are heavily outdated and data reflects that.
While it’s good data to see, I’m always suspicious of celebrating the fact that people have gone from earning $2 per day to $5 per day as “eradicating poverty.”
You can check the real wages and purchasing power parity, moreover more than doubling earnings is a large feat.
Could you point out the purchasing power data? It’s a 93 page report and I don’t see any heading on that in the table of contents.
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China%E2%80%99s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&%3Blocations=CN&%3Bstart=2008
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
In 2024, Chinese households hit another record high https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
These are not things that happen in societies where the rich have power. The only thing naive here is your understanding of China. Oh and before you start bleating that China has billionaires, I encourage you to read this https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
you should go to China and ask average Chinese people about how they feel about their “cheap groceries”.
Have you done this? What did they say?
wealth inequality is a huge problem, and attribute it to inflation is naive. the rich has power in a capitalistic society, they will win no matter we are in an inflationary or deflationary economy. to think deflation will be good for the working people is very naive.
You haven't disproved my point about inflation being a tool for the ruling class to recoup the gains of the working class, which it is. You've just said "they will win no matter what and deflation is not good for working people" without explaining why.
Can you elaborate on why deflation is bad? Do you think inflation isn't a result of workers having more money to spend and businesses raising prices to maximize profit?
I have. It was rent, not groceries, but same conversation. Their feedback was consistent. “In the past, the government covered this entirely, but now we have to pay a part.”
I asked how that works when they are employed by the government, technically. The government is how they earn money to pay for the thing the government used to pay for. How does this make sense?
Their answer: “In the past, the government covered this entirely, but now we have to pay a part.”
Do you think everyone in China works for the government?
And getting the same answer sounds more like a language issue or brush off than anything significant.
