Rising Stacks of Money

You nominally earn well, but watch your paycheck devalue as prices soar and investments become a game of survival.

Version 1.5: edited from the original entry. The linked music and retained lyrics belong to the original edition.

🎵Inflation Inflation Inflation🎵 YouTube
Inspired by ABBA’s Money, Money, Money Disc
Lyrics by Novix

I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay (Ain’t it sad?)
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me (Oh so bad!)
In my dreams, I have a plan—if I got rich I’d buy some land
But each new raise, and every dime, just buys me less and wastes my time…

James AI: Inflation is a sustained rise in the general price level. To a household whose income and cash savings do not keep pace, it feels like a hidden deduction from money already earned. Unexpected inflation can also benefit borrowers with fixed nominal debts at the expense of lenders. But this redistribution depends on contracts, interest rates, wages, and expectations; it does not happen identically to every saver or borrower.

Households with financial cushions can absorb rising essentials more easily than households already spending most of their income on necessities. Asset ownership may provide some protection, but property and shares do not automatically rise in real value during inflation. The real grievance is unequal room to maneuver. People can feel pressured to chase returns, even though speculative trading is neither an inevitable response nor a dependable remedy.

Moreover, inflation disrupts the basic trust in money. As prices become unpredictable, contracts and long-term plans become fragile. Businesses raise prices “just in case,” workers demand cost-of-living raises that chase a moving target, and the economy enters a cycle of short-termism and class antagonism. Calling this “embezzlement” expresses a moral accusation; it does not establish a cause. The stronger charge is that policy makers may tolerate losses they would struggle to justify as an explicit tax, especially when those losses fall on people least able to protect themselves.

Contra AI: Inflation is a complex phenomenon, not a secret theft operation by the state. Demand growth, supply disruptions, monetary conditions, and expectations can all matter. A change in market power or pricing behavior may contribute in particular sectors; saying “greed” by itself does not explain why price increases accelerate at a particular time. Nor is inflation necessarily evidence of economic vitality: prices can rise while output suffers. The IMF’s introductory account distinguishes several mechanisms.

Government spending can finance useful services; it can also be wasteful or poorly timed. Its merits must be assessed rather than assumed. Unexpected inflation may reduce the real burden of existing fixed-rate public debt, but future borrowing costs, indexed obligations, and credibility losses complicate that benefit. A case for low, predictable inflation is not a blank check for government.

The strongest defense of monetary policy is that it must weigh competing harms, including unemployment and financial instability. That does not make every policy decision correct. Austrian critiques press useful questions about monetary discretion and distribution, even where one rejects their diagnosis or proposed remedies.

Inflation, inflation, inflaaation
Stealing my pay!
It’s a crime that’s legal, hidden, greased and gray—
Rising stacks of money
But they float away!

James AI: But describing mechanisms does not answer the question of consent. If a policy predictably erodes purchasing power for people whose incomes lag, who must explain that cost? Monetary expansion can affect asset prices and demand through different channels; the sequence is not an iron law. The distribution of gains and losses still deserves scrutiny.

Contra AI: People reasonably want dependable purchasing power. Yet the alternative is not costless: widespread falling prices can interact with fixed debts and weak demand, while particular prices can also fall for welcome reasons such as productivity. Indexing benefits or wages may cushion some losses, but coverage is incomplete and the costs go somewhere. Compare actual policy tradeoffs, not an idealized currency with an idealized central bank.

Old men grin while stocks ascend, the rich make millions just to spend (It’s obscene!)
While I invest in cans of beans, and chase returns in Reddit memes (What a scene!)
The banks get bailouts, fat with yield,
While I fight hikes on eggs and meals—
The rich get gold, the poor get debt,
And every year’s more rigged, I bet…

James AI: But look at what inflation forces: a shift from saving to chasing returns. Families that once thrived on budgeting and prudence are now told to “invest or be left behind.” When rent, tuition, and groceries rise faster than wages, even responsible earners are punished. Borrowers with fixed-rate obligations may benefit from unexpected inflation; borrowers refinancing at higher rates may not. The unequal ability to choose those positions is what makes the distributional question urgent.

Contra AI:

Inflation can directly hurt savers when returns do not keep pace; access to financial products cannot wish that away. Better access and social protection may help, but productive assets carry risk and transfers require funding. Government should be judged by whether its remedies reduce harm without creating larger costs elsewhere.

Synthesis:

Inflation is not inherently immoral, but it is politically potent. Its burdens often fall hardest on those with the least room in their budgets, though no single class wins in every inflationary episode. When mismanaged, it warps incentives, undermines trust, and accelerates inequality. Low and predictable inflation is easier to plan around than sudden, volatile inflation; transparency and useful public investment still need separate evaluation.

The core disagreement is not whether inflation exists or even whether it benefits some more than others—it’s whether this benefit can be fairly governed. One side sees monetary expansion as an inevitable tool of state favoritism; the other argues that policy must manage imperfect tradeoffs rather than promise an unchanging price level. Perhaps the truer critique lies not in inflation itself, but in the institutions we entrust to wield it. To reclaim trust, we need sound money and sound governance—not blind faith in markets or mandarins, but a transparent alignment of power, money, and responsibility.

I try to save, I try to plan, but every month I need a scam (Crypto coin?)
They say “diversify your cash!” but every option’s flash and crash (So annoying!)
Inflation robs me stealthily,
While charts go green for the bourgeoisie—
My dollars shrink, their stocks ascend,
And normal life just won’t unbend…

Resources:

What Has Government Done to Our Money? by Murray Rothbard — an accessible statement of the Austrian case against government monetary intervention.
The Case Against the Fed by Murray Rothbard — a sustained argument against central banking, to compare with institutional defenses.
The Ethics of Money Production by Jörg Guido Hülsmann — explicitly ethical arguments about monetary institutions and their distributional effects.
When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany by Adam Fergusson — the social experience of a severe historical monetary collapse.
Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White — a historical argument about French revolutionary paper money, best read with attention to its polemical purpose.
The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G. Edward Griffin — retained as part of the original reading list, but it is a polemical account, not a neutral monetary history or a reliable substitute for checking specific claims.

The Austrian works above state a particular school’s critique; Fergusson and White discuss extreme historical episodes, which should not be treated as equivalents of ordinary inflation. Compare those arguments with the IMF explanation, whose institutional perspective should also be read critically. The lyrics retain the original narrator’s anger; the prose distinguishes that voice from a causal finding.

James Prompt

TITLE: Rising Stacks of Money
LEAD: A parody of Money Money Money depicting someone earning good money but inflation making it worth ever less.
PROMPT: Inflation is the government embezzling money from the people and fundamentally forces speculative investment, rampant consumerism, and distrust between the classes. It particularly benefits the wealthy via asset inflation and lowering the burden of debt.
CONTRA: Inflation is largely a mystery, an artifact of the greed of capitalists suddenly able to charge more. And if government does benefit, that’s good because government is always investing in improving the lives of its citizens.
RECOMMEND: Resources on inflation by Austrian economists, a history of inflations across countries