Inflation Rises Around The World As The Supply Of Memes About It Reaches A Record High

By Aidan Walker
2662 views
• Published 2 years ago

Published 2 years ago

A report from the U.S. government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 8.5 percent between March 2021 and March 2022, meaning that the United States is facing a level of inflation not seen since the 1980s. The Consumer Price Index is calculated by looking at the price of a series of different products that consumers often buy, including food and gas, and calculating how much those prices have increased on average.


The White House has blamed Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war in Ukraine for inflation, a charge which is not without merit since economists estimate that a lot of the inflation increase since February is because of rising gas prices, for which sanctions and the war are responsible.


But rising inflation predated the war and even Biden's presidency. Inflation started to rise significantly in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns. The Federal Reserve significantly increased the amount of money in circulation (a situation memorably memed in Money Printer Go Brr) because they wanted to prop up a spiraling economy. The Fed virtually printed a bunch of cash and loaned it to banks so that, even though preexisting money stopped circulating in the economy because nobody was buying anything, the banks could loan out the new money and keep the lights on that way. Other central banks around the world made similar decisions.

Taking it back even further, the Federal Reserve has carried on a controversial policy called “quantitative easing” since 2008, in which it made the decision to print extra money in order to prop up the economy in a time of crisis and then never really stopped doing that. Essentially, the deal the Fed made over the last 15 years was to accept some increase in inflation and in return keep a lid on rising unemployment (because if banks can loan money easily, businesses are more likely to invest and hire people).


Now the Federal Reserve has reversed course, increasing interest rates on the money banks borrow from it by 0.25 percent, meaning that the virtual money-printing will slow down — but some think it’s too little and too late.


Critics of Joe Biden and his administration have blamed the President for rising inflation, producing a variety of memes arguing that point. In particular, some memers online seemed upset at what they saw as deceptive messaging by the Biden Administration about the causes and severity of inflation.


Some on the left suggested that the cause of inflation may be the greedy actions of corporations and investors who saw record profits during the pandemic in large part because of how easy it was to borrow money from the banks that were glad to lend out all the new money the Fed printed.


But the inflation problem is not just an American one. In a global economy in which the dollar is the most influential currency, what happens in one economy impacts another. The countries of Sri Lanka and Peru have seen significant turmoil in the past few weeks, in part because of rising inflation that impoverished their citizens. Prices in Europe and Asia have also risen significantly, and alarm bells are ringing not just in Washington and Wall Street, but essentially everywhere.


As prices continue to rise, policymakers will have to figure out ways to address the problem — and people around the world will have to navigate an increasingly cruel and difficult economy.

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