Embracing Deflation with 99-cent Stores and Discount Movies
13th October 2012
If you believe inflation is under control, then answer this: Where can you get a dozen eggs for a buck?
Nowhere, not even if you own the chicken.
For decades economists have warned about the dangers of deflation. The ongoing double-digit, multimarket decline in real estate prices should horrify us, we are told. Even our language has been edited to reflect this mentality; the phrase real estate recovery is a happy-sounding euphemism for a reinflation of housing prices. Yet everywhere you look, Americans are happy to do the deflation dance.
I wouldn’t mind a little deflation if it meant I could pay 25 cents for a candy bar rather than a buck.
It is well that experts remind us deflation is terrible. Otherwise we might grow too fond of it.
Some of us already are.