Milton Friedman famously said: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”
Well, he's wrong, given that output has been knocked about by a large number of non-monetary factors such as COVID, supply chain issues, the war with Russia, and (yet again) oil and gas.
The way I see it, even if there’s a war or Covid or whatever, if people don’t have more money to spend, they can’t pay higher prices. Then you get a recession.
If they do have the money (because you printed more) they pay the higher prices. Then you get inflation.
We have a housing crisis and an energy crisis. There's absolutely no need to drag monetary theory in when the outcome is due to failed industrial policy.
Why can't it be all three? I understand that it is easier to sell it as a specific political problem, but I am genuinely tired of arguing partial inflation problem, because discussing it as a whole undermines some political angle.
