Darren is joined by our resident economics expert, Lars, for an interesting conversation about inflation, deflation and related economic issues. Darren and Lars discuss the biography “The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann”, who is a revered mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath.
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I have to say, I’m a bit perplexed that Darren didn’t push back against the notion that greed is not a significant driver of inflation, especially when it comes to price gouging. Maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt he’d let it slide if someone said that greed didn’t have much to do with cruel conditions in factory farming.
(I did think a lot about whether that’s a false equivalence because the economy is really hurting most of the people I know, so yeah my bias goes there.)
In the end, yes, I do understand the segment was supposed to be an overview of inflation within the Supply and Demand economic model, not a nuanced discussion about the benefits vs. failures of various economic policies over the past several decades. (Let Richard Wolf and Lawrence Summers battle that one out.) It’s just that it was a real WTF moment for me.