alt.hn

3/30/2026 at 2:49:58 PM

72% of the dollar's purchasing power was destroyed in just four episodes

 https://eco3min.fr/en/us-inflation-is-not-linear/

by latentframe

3/30/2026 at 4:01:57 PM

This study doesn't correct for baseline exponential decay due to inflation, to better highlight the meaningful variations. By comparing based on 1914 dollars it also causes old variations to be relatively more extreme and newer inflationary events to look less extreme. You must compare apples to apples.

Finally the events are quite cherry-picked. It is a conclusion looking for a result, when the statistical reason for choosing those 4 events simply isn't evident when you look at the data itself. There is no mathematical rule you could apply to your dataset that would distinctly highlight those 4 periods.

by probablypower

3/30/2026 at 5:16:29 PM

Yes, a log chart would be better. That said, apples cannot be compared in this case; probably very few of us would choose to go back to 1914. A Tesla model Y would cost $1,680 in 1901 dollars, but would have been worth millions of those same 1901 dollars. Or nothing, depending on how much charging tech you could fit in the frunk. Many quality of life items are not covered by PPP (or money supply or other measures) adjustments.

by vessenes

3/30/2026 at 5:49:08 PM

Why would anyone pay millions of dollars - that would be the equivalent to a billionaire's entire fortune - for a Tesla Model Y in 1901?

You'd have nowhere to charge it. Electricity would be more expensive than gas even if you did.

You'd benefit almost nothing from the technology. There's no internet. Not much of it would work. And it wouldn't really help move you forward technologically, as it's just too advanced.

by onlyrealcuzzo

3/30/2026 at 8:16:23 PM

I think you are interpreting the comment too literally. The point is just this: calculating inflation is an art and depending on what kinds of assumptions you make, the results will vary wildly.

Before the printing press, very few people in Europe owned even a single book. But even a lower class, modern European might easily own several dozen books. Depending on how you account for this, you might conclude that the given lower class, modern person is among the richest people in Europe in 1400. Or you might not properly account for the wealth of a 1400 European noble and rank them as middle class by modern standards.

It's simpler with commodities like a bushel of wheat, but still complicated. Depending on what you are trying to explain, you can use different methods but there is not straightforward way to convert the cost of something in one time period to another time period.

by jaredklewis

3/30/2026 at 5:55:55 PM

Right. Many, many reasons why the dollar that bought the Tesla in 2026 is not quite so disadvantaged against the dollar of 1901 it’s being compared to by CPI.

by twoodfin

3/30/2026 at 7:00:43 PM

There was little reasons for anybody to buy a Model T either. The reason they did is that the government picked winners, let people drive cars through city roads. Commute times have only gotten longer, GDP growth has been more than offset by cost of roads and road deaths.

by casey2

3/30/2026 at 5:03:55 PM

I think this graph shows the "apples to apples" comparison:

https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1800?amount=1

Doing a spot check, this means $1 in in 1913 is equivalent to roughly $32.83 today.

by abetusk

3/30/2026 at 5:53:22 PM

That’s ~3.17% compounded annually.

Modest, stable inflation is good. It encourages investment & discourages deferring consumption for indirect monetary reasons.

“Stable” is the hard part.

by twoodfin

3/30/2026 at 9:16:56 PM

That seems pretty bad if the Fed target is 2%.

by xboxnolifes

3/30/2026 at 6:35:08 PM

This is dogma, but I'm not sure it's possible or even ideal. Booms and busts seem endemic to any economy that targets inflation, and of course most entities (that don't understand the balance) want to encourage booms and limit busts. Meanwhile, there's another way to think of inflation (and also deflation):

Inflation obfuscates the value of money and therefore of goods, services, etc. In an environment where value is volatile, it makes sense to keep moving, keep trading, because you might come into possession of something that was undervalued before you owned it, or that you'll need in a future when it would otherwise be too expensive. The people who skim off the top of all of this activity love this environment.

Deflation, on the other hand, makes value readily and immediately apparent. What was speculative and risky goes to zero and people hold onto things with intrinsic value. Those who skim profit off of economic activity hate the slowdown, obviously, but maybe you need periods of this to reset when valuations becomes too far removed from reality.

Is it a bad thing for people to buy what they need, when they need it, instead of being forced by inflation to anticipate their needs further and further out?

by underlipton

3/30/2026 at 6:04:23 PM

Also we’re looking at periods that involve dramatically different monetary policy (gold standard before WWII, Bretton Woods from 1944-1976, then the current regime).

by rayiner

3/30/2026 at 6:23:36 PM

One could argue that the defining aspect of each of those shifts in monetary policy has been to devalue the dollar further. I have a relatively basic understanding of economics though, and do understand the arguments that even if that's the outcome it's not an inherently bad one as an american, though a notable effect appears to have been massively widening inequality.

by simplyluke

3/30/2026 at 5:30:11 PM

Exactly, it doesn't matter to me how much COVID contributed to the erosion of 1901 100 Dollars.

by elzbardico

3/30/2026 at 6:24:14 PM

It (presumably) does matter to you how much COVID policy contributed to houses doubling in cost, though.

by simplyluke

3/30/2026 at 5:35:33 PM

You're basically critiquing a chart showing how purchasing power is decayed due to inflation because it isn't adjusted for "baseline" inflation. That doesn't make sense.

And yes, earlier variations are more impactful because compounding.

I will say that a better representation would be a logarithm of the inverse. The problem with doing it this way is that later changes look very small. $1.00 to $.99 is the same y-axis delta as $0.05 to $0.04 but the latter is very different.

by jmyeet

3/30/2026 at 3:50:41 PM

This supports my hunch that the current Iran war creates a lethal trifecta that could potentially cause a dollar collapse. 1. Massive military overspend. 2. Petrodollar squeeze (Strait of Hormuz). 3. Allies pulling out: Europe and the Gulf diversifying both their investments and defense purchases.

#1 creates oversupply of dollars and #2 and #3 lower demand. This study supports the idea that wars can indeed destroy purchasing power.

by znnajdla

3/30/2026 at 3:57:43 PM

Iran is also playing its own Uno card here by saying that it would consider allowing some oil and gas shipments through the Strait if they have been bought with Chinese Yuan, than the US dollar. ( The Islamic Republic may grant safe passage to oil tankers if the cargo is traded in Chinese yuan - https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/iran-allow-chinese-ships-hormu... ).

by thisislife2

3/30/2026 at 4:28:44 PM

I've never heard the expression "to play one's Uno card." Is this a play on "to play one's Trump card"? I can understand why this phrasing could cause confusion, but want to make sure I'm not missing something.

by johnmaguire

3/30/2026 at 4:37:27 PM

In Uno, you're supposed to say ‘Uno’ as you play your second to last card (indicating you are close to winning).

by lostlogin

3/30/2026 at 4:42:12 PM

I think the internet use is usually “reverse uno (card)” which means the tables are being turned, aka what you tried is being reflected back at you.

by prox

3/30/2026 at 5:02:54 PM

I really don't think that HN would ace a card game knowledge test.

by anal_reactor

3/30/2026 at 6:00:40 PM

Thank you for your faith in HN, anal reactor.

by sp4cec0wb0y

3/30/2026 at 7:24:11 PM

don't be a joker

by krsw

3/30/2026 at 4:42:52 PM

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/uno-reverse-card

Trump attacked Iran thinking that this would somehow be good for the US, except it's weakening the petrodollar because it's pushed Iran to simply accept Yuan for oil.

by noboostforyou

3/30/2026 at 5:21:27 PM

One of the previous times the US attacked Iran, it was because Iran wanted to accept Euros for oil.

by ErroneousBosh

3/30/2026 at 4:07:34 PM

This is particularly funny if you consider petrodollar to be a bad deal for US, not a good one. Ironically, if yuan becomes new petroleum currency, it might hurt Chinese long term.

by d3ckard

3/30/2026 at 4:44:41 PM

Petro-yuan =/= reserve currency.

USD reserve = print USD for everything liquidity to sustain debt financed existence where Triffin hollows out industry, and financialize everything because having stupid amount of liquidity incentivizes certain behaviors.

Petro-yuan = PRC gives swap lines to trusted partners to buy oil denominated in yuan in exchange for things like resources. Hormuz ships ~1 trillion USD worth energy that needs "swapping" - incidentally PRC imports around ~2-3 trillion, more than enough to cover.

So think petro-yuan = PRC gives trusted countries with resources that PRC bonds credit lines to buy yuan denominated energy (possibly at discount), in return they guarantee PRC resources or other commercial/geopolitical arrangements. It will be narrow, not like USD brrrting reserves.

This benefits PRC because get to have leverage over "need" transactions (countries need energy to survive, it's no negotiate) while US keeps supporting "want" transactions by reserve debt servicing blackhole that US cannot extricate itself from until it debases / technical defaults. PRC best game plan is... assume privileged part of exorbitant privilege, while leaving US the exorbitant.

by maxglute

3/30/2026 at 5:06:39 PM

The problem with that plan is that no one wants to trade hard commodities for a currency that can’t be spent. One part of the dollars appeal is that it spends the world over. The sanctioned countries frequently have more liberal access to dollars than to unsanctioned yuan.

So no one is going to take up a lot of yuan trade unless that changes or they are forced to.

But that puts China in a bind. Liberalizing their currency is going to require very careful and slow actions, China threads this needle now in a very fraught way. If they openly start trading oil at any real size in yuan that will break their peg as you’ll be able to trade through the oil markets.

This is the main reason there isn’t more petro yuan already, it’s bad for China.

by kasey_junk

3/30/2026 at 6:33:44 PM

> The problem with that plan is that no one wants to trade hard commodities for a currency that can’t be spent. One part of the dollars appeal is that it spends the world over.

> So no one is going to take up a lot of yuan trade unless that changes or they are forced to.

Related on the “forced to”point, this is where Russia is stuck with its crude oil sales to India where the payments have been made to it in Indian Rupees. There’s almost nothing that Russia can do with the Indian Rupee. This is a huge and growing problem because India’s imports from Russia eclipse its exports to Russia by more than 10 times. [1]

[1]: https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/india-russia-sum...

by wtmt

3/31/2026 at 1:21:37 AM

Unlike China, a country whose exports to other countries dwarfs their exports. The yuan is much more valuable than the rupee (which is turning to trash with each passing month as a net effect of trade wars and oil crises).

by fakedang

3/30/2026 at 5:09:58 PM

You can buy from China though. And China is the largest import trading partner for the majority of countries in the world. They literally don't need to do anything to prop up a "petro-yuan".

by fakedang

3/30/2026 at 5:32:05 PM

You can’t largely. At least not with offshore yuan. To do that you have to go through the controlled settlement channels to get onshore yuan. That’s tightly controlled to protect the peg.

So no one is going to use a controlled currency for a hard liquid commodity. So if China wants petro yuan they have to liberalize that, which will break their peg.

China could have more international trade in the yuan before all of Americas recent misadventures. But that has cast consequences for their economy, and possibly the ruling elites power structures.

by kasey_junk

3/30/2026 at 8:44:07 PM

Very interesting, 2 different yuan’s!

  - offshore yuan
  - onshore yuan
Do you have more details on this? A book, a blog, an article?

by smartbit

3/30/2026 at 9:14:22 PM

Do a google search for “cnh vs cny forex”

by kasey_junk

3/31/2026 at 12:07:50 AM

Saudi Arabia was literally negotiating with China for payments in yuan for petroleum way before the war started, in 2023. The Gulf countries' largest trading partner is China - such a transaction is effectively a barter enabling programme. Russia and now Iran already accept yuan.

The mainland vs offshore renminbi restrictions disappear in Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. where most mainland Chinese trading companies and otherwise have offices anyways. Trading offshore to onshore renminbi becomes their problem, one that they are fairly accustomed to.

by fakedang

3/31/2026 at 3:26:20 AM

The negotiations were literally about how to manage the currency risk to Riyadh. And none of the offshore trading houses are handling the currency transactions at the size necessary to handle large oil transactions.

This is as near an iron law as there is economics, you can’t keep a peg and have a large trade in a large liquid commodity market. China is trying to slowly thread this needle and they can get away with it with Iran and Russia because they are approaching vassal status because the petrodollars are closed to them. Everyone in the world can see this and wants to avoid it.

If you are an oil producer what you want is to diversify your currency risk. Right now China is _preventing_ this, because there is no way for them to become a major player in that market without huge impact on their economy and probably their political system.

by kasey_junk

3/30/2026 at 5:19:24 PM

> a currency that can’t be spent

You can spend it in China, right?

by triceratops

3/30/2026 at 7:23:44 PM

If they let you when you want to.

One big thing that has prevented CNY from becoming a reserve currency is that China has explicitly said it wants to preserve its ability to heavily and suddenly restrict capital flows in and out of China. If all of a sudden you can't redeem CNY outside of China inside it that makes it a very poor storage of value.

by bobthepanda

3/30/2026 at 5:51:48 PM

> The problem with that plan is that no one wants to trade hard commodities for a currency that can’t be spent

You can't spend US dollars either, in 99% of the world.

by ErroneousBosh

3/30/2026 at 5:27:34 PM

Literally buy from PRC... most of worlds largest trade partner. That's why the system should work, it's closed loop. And we know world aktually fine with yuan denominated trade since PRC increased yuan settlement from 10 to >50% in a few years after US went sanction happy. PRC basically super costco, apart from chips and commercial aviation (both coming) they sell everything country needs for modernity, at discount.

They do not need to liberalize currency. They just need to have stuff people want, and leverage to force them to transact in PRC preferred currency. Previously this was hard, PRC had goods, and affordable prices = reduce friction/switching cost vs USD liquidity, but USD liquidity still made USD transaction preferred. PRC had no leverage for others to transact in yuan.

But in persistent high global energy environment, if PRC controls basically global supply of cheap renewables... and 30% of GCC oil vs Iran enforcing petro-yuan, they have stupid leverage to snow ball system. Again key is this for 30% of GCC oil exports if Iran locks down (big if), it's not global petro-yuan, it's Costco membership only access petro-yuan.

30% of global oil is inelastic existential survival leverage, if PRC wanted to charge in blowjobs countries would pay in blowjobs, currency liberalization doesn't matter when selling water in desert.

by maxglute

3/30/2026 at 5:50:11 PM

For that 30% control number to make any sense you have to believe that: the gulf states are going to allow Iran to control their existential oil trade long term, that they will do so in the face of a currency getting manipulated adversarially against them, that no manufacturing bases can be built up to be alternatives and that none of that is going to have major impacts on the economy or political elites in China.

All of that happening with the worlds biggest oil producer, its second biggest manufacturer, who is food independent and has the worlds most powerful military just lets it happen. And no shooting war breaking out between them.

I’m betting on slow currency liberalization and a transition to a multi currency petroleum industry and subsequent inefficiencies in global trade. But feel free to bet how you want.

by kasey_junk

3/30/2026 at 6:21:53 PM

I am not betting on one or other happening, I am simply stating, the downstream effect of Iran being able to hold onto Hormuz, i.e. by outlasting US political will create conditions for GCC petro-yuan. Which may not be out of question because we're not in nothing ever happens world anymore.

> make any sense

GCC petro-yuan scenario is predicated on BIG IF that Iran can control Hormuz oil. Rest is the downstream logic for ~10 years, i.e. before any alternative buildout/pivot by GCC states to some how insulate... which apart from Saudi, they might not (too small). This also why PRC hasn't exactly enthusiastically signed up despite IR offer, because it would burn GCC bridge when IR fate uncertain. But if alternative is IR can hold hormuz hostage, PRC would rather participate in petro-yuan than not, at which point having priority access to energy, possibly at discount is net win. Note in this case IR as SLOC guard dog actually has leverage over PRC, gating energy access also offer PRC cannot refuse.

> US

Hence big if, if US has appetite and capability to break Iran, and it matters US settlement/conditions, because if US reasserts control over Hormuz oil and tries to throttle PRC oil as victory, then PRC may go all in on Iran support. Situation is fluid, the wild card is in fact US or ISR deciding to simply break GCC oil. There is still plenty of room for escalation and shenanigans.

by maxglute

3/30/2026 at 5:35:28 PM

Yes, but for a consumption addicted society like the US, an abrupt end to the petrodolar would be an incredibly traumatic event.

Think about it, every single mother fucking year, the US roughly buys 1 trillion dollars more on services and goods from the rest of the world, than it sells.

It has this privilege/curse basically because the US dollar IS the world's global commerce and finance currency.

by elzbardico

3/30/2026 at 4:34:18 PM

The petrodollar confers a huge advantage to the US, which is the whole point of it. It soaks up liquidity and allows the US to export inflation which allows it to be in the insanely profitable business of printing money. An argument could be made that this is corrupting and economically distorting to society resulting in a net negative but there is no guarantee that the same corruption would undermine China in a timely manner. I think the effect would be rather muted provided that the US remains world hegemon but if the US would lose the petrodollar and credible force projection at the same time we will shift from the current looting stages of collapse to the free for all stage of collapse. Or put another way, from a managed decline to an unmanaged decline.

by cjbgkagh

3/30/2026 at 5:44:49 PM

It's not advantage, it makes for artificial demand for your currency, which completely screws up all the relevant metrics and makes you unable to actually inflate the currency when getting less competitive.

It's resource curse on steroids.

by d3ckard

3/30/2026 at 6:21:21 PM

We are assuming a resource curse on steroids, the ability to sell the ‘resource’ is used to distort the economy and pay for the cost of running an empire. The US chooses to do this because it is controlled by those who benefit from this not for the long term benefit of the country.

Saying it’s not an advantage is to assume those in control want to have manufacturing in the US, while such noises are made there is very little action beyond capricious crony capitalism tariffs that no normal business can possibly rely on.

by cjbgkagh

3/30/2026 at 7:55:44 PM

They very much want to have manufacturing, since it’s a requirement for war. They just don’t realize it. Plus, it is a conflict between all the extra money to spend and long term state welfare.

by d3ckard

3/30/2026 at 8:20:08 PM

These two statements don’t mesh “They very much want” and “They just don’t realize it.”

It seems both you and I agree that manufacturing is an essential component to war-fighting and the health of a nation, but I think it is safe to say that you and I have effectively no control over what the US does.

by cjbgkagh

3/30/2026 at 4:14:31 PM

Why?

by high_na_euv

3/30/2026 at 4:31:13 PM

long term in a sense of centuries? i think they can afford this.

by vincnetas

3/30/2026 at 4:36:26 PM

Or not. It depends on policies other than just being reserved currency

by FpUser

3/30/2026 at 4:16:38 PM

>Ironically, if yuan becomes new petroleum currency, it might hurt Chinese long term.

Agreed. Which is why the Chinese do NOT want their currency to become the Petrodollar or world's reserve currency. They know that that is what destroyed US Manufacturing. China wants to maintain their manufacturing dominance. They've seen what de-industrialization has done to the US.

by tharmas

3/30/2026 at 4:36:15 PM

How are you connecting the petrodollar and US manufacturing? US manufacturing was destroyed because companies closed their factories in the US and used factories in China because labor was cheaper and they were less regulated.

by ImJamal

3/30/2026 at 5:43:23 PM

Under normal conditions, when your economy becomes less competitive, your currency gets depreciated, increasing competitiveness.

Unless of course everybody is forced to buy your currency to get an essential resource. This causes: - the currency to maintain value better - puts you in position of other countries having to maintain a trade surplus with you so they can actually purchase said resource - the oil producers end up with great amounts of your currency, which they have to spend, getting a political foothold in your country.

Petrodollar almost certainly was devastating to US economy. And like most resource curses, it's like a drug - you need to stop taking it to get better, but it will hurt as hell.

by d3ckard

3/30/2026 at 4:50:47 PM

Petrodollar creates demand for dollars. This is demand that no other currency gets. That's why US production is expensive vs other countries. China labor is cheaper and it is less regulated, but the petrodollar exacerbates the problem.

by mekdoonggi

3/30/2026 at 4:41:28 PM

Because it increases US workers relative (to other countries) wage. Though with current automation levels this may be a lesser problem.

by lvass

3/30/2026 at 4:36:51 PM

[dead]

by 0xpiguy

3/30/2026 at 4:15:16 PM

One of the goals of the Heritage Foundation is a weak dollar. They believe they can bring manufacturing back to the US this way. I don't think they're right. I do think they will continue weakening the dollar.

by leche

3/30/2026 at 4:37:41 PM

> One of the goals of the Heritage Foundation is a weak dollar. They believe they can bring manufacturing back to the US this way.

Only cheap labor can bring manufacturing back to the US. Are Americans willing to work in factories for the same wages as the Chinese and Indians? I don't see it happening.

by cheema33

3/30/2026 at 5:21:56 PM

> Only cheap labor can bring manufacturing back to the US. Are Americans willing to work in factories for the same wages as the Chinese and Indians? I don't see it happening.

Under conditions of free trade with low-wage countries.

Free trade with low-wage countries is a policy choice, but a lot of people confuse it for a natural law.

by palmotea

3/30/2026 at 4:59:13 PM

> Are Americans willing to work in factories for the same wages as the Chinese and Indians? I don't see it happening.

Create enough poverty and soon people will be willing to do an awful lot of things.

by margalabargala

3/30/2026 at 5:18:30 PM

That is the point of cheapening the dollar, BTW. The local wages can stay 'high' dollar denominated, but the euro-denominated value of those wages drops. It was for some time the strategy of the Chinese central bank; you can keep export good costs low by controlling your currency to weaker. The trick is to do that while everyone is paying you for your stuff.

by vessenes

3/30/2026 at 5:06:51 PM

Cheap labor wouldn't necessarily bring manufacturing back to the USA. Over time much of the labor can potentially be automated. But environmental and zoning rules effectively ban entire industries such as metal casting. If we want those industries back then we'll need a major realignment of public policy that goes beyond just labor.

by nradov

3/30/2026 at 5:42:28 PM

Cheap labor requires cheap rent and cheap goods. You can't have indian/chinese wages at American cost of living.

How do you bring down costs? generally you'd need to restrict real estate. Lock down rent costs for both residential and commercial.

by MSFT_Edging

3/30/2026 at 5:11:41 PM

What if the "same wage" as Chinese/Indians nets you close to the same basic necessities and purchasing power as those countries.

by devsda

3/30/2026 at 6:46:01 PM

You won’t get it unless you also work the 996 slave shift. At which point who gives a fuck about my purchasing power if there’s no time to enjoy it.

by guzfip

3/30/2026 at 4:56:14 PM

With a weak dollar, those wages will be more equal.

by amelius

3/30/2026 at 5:47:37 PM

Of course, but even if Americans were willing to do that kind of work for those wages it wouldn't have much impact. The kind of manufacturing that makes serious money doesn't and usually can't use cheap labour, not in the long run at least. And in those parts of the economy where cheap labour is effective, agriculture for instance, the availability of cheap immigrant labour is simply holding back innovation.

But the US is a major manufacturing nation anyway. US manufacturing output is more than half of that of China while having only a quarter of the population.

When groups like the far right say bring back manufacturing they are just posturing to those voters who have been disadvantaged by changes in the commercial landscape that reduces the number of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. If they really cared about those people they would support massive improvements to education and training so that at least the next generation had a chance rather than idiotic schemes to 'bring back' the kinds of work that no one needs.

by ninalanyon

3/30/2026 at 6:29:01 PM

You have a baseline of prosperity and life in your head.

The Heritage guys have a weird perspective where they idolize the early Federalist US and the Reagan Era. Prosperity for the common man wasn’t a highlight of either era, to put it mildly.

In 1790s New York, for example, “local control” meant that many of the people of upstate New York were a sort of serf-like tenant living on the estates of the great men, Dutch patroons who played ball with the colonial and State political infrastructure. They had the freedom to pay rent until their landlord was willing to let them go. That existed into the 1840s, when the country started getting woke.

So we can address housing issues with creative solutions. Why do poor people need their own apartments? Stuff them into a tenement. You can easily fit 15 people in a two bedroom apartment so they can build drones or whatever.

by Spooky23

3/30/2026 at 4:59:37 PM

I don't think they are going to ask.

by delusional

3/30/2026 at 4:33:34 PM

They are right on that. What they are wrong is when they decided that is a good thing.

Not every kind of "bringing manufacturing back" brings the same kind of wealth and quality of life.

by marcosdumay

3/30/2026 at 4:38:25 PM

Wealth is relative.

And the Heritage Foundation is not in the business of improving quality of life for everyone, or even the average American.

by fmbb

3/30/2026 at 5:25:35 PM

It's not the optimal course for most billionaires either. Maybe it is for a few of them.

by marcosdumay

3/30/2026 at 6:32:43 PM

I mean ”optimal” is not well defined. It is not great for the economy or societal stability and if wealth is more and more unevenly distributed. But the wealthy benefit in the short term by gaining power in society.

by fmbb

3/30/2026 at 7:30:56 PM

Ok, "optimal" may be the wrong word.

Most billionaires will lose both money and power on the timeframe of a couple of years due to the destruction of the value of the dollar. Even internally to the US.

Some may gain both. Someone will probably gain both, and the odds are good some billionaires are included.

by marcosdumay

3/30/2026 at 6:13:52 PM

> I don't think they're right.

it's worse then them not being right

the only way a weak dollar would majorly matter for bringing back production is iff production is cheap

so a 20% weaker dollar must not come with 20% higher "dollar" prices (living cost, salary). You need to decrees living cost and dollar value in lock step (i.e. weaker dollar without inflation!). But this seem impossible IMHO. And if we look at what happened, if anything, it went the other way.

And if you try to force it anyway you are basically saying "we effectively disown most money of most US citizens" and use that to try to attack manufacturing, while likely not relevantly affecting the wealthiest.

That is just plain evil.

And not very surprising if you consider that many "manufacturing countries" have pretty horrifying working conditions often not "that" far apart from slavery.

Worse this likely wouldn't work either, because iff your countries population doesn't have the money to buy stuff anymore, and investments are risky, why would you even bother to produce there? To then export to countries where investments into production lines are more reliable? Like how is that supposed to work?

Naturally things can be different if we only speak about high-tech / high-end manufacturing. But the current steps do not seem promising to archive that either:

1) this kind of manufacturing lines need even higher investments, i.e. act even more allergic wrt. trade instability and uncertainty

2) Trump has brought some high tech manufacturing into the US with a mixture of force and bribes/subsidization. But honestly it looks a lot of it is mostly hollow promises, not making a relevant difference long term.

3) More then one case where companies did agree had a lot of big problems. One of the biggest issue being, that missing in depth know-how requires temp. importing people which can make sure things work while teaching that know how (if you want things to get going fast. If you go slow you can send your people to other countries to learn.). But a destroyed visa system makes this a high risk for anyone coming to the US and did lead to more then one person like that being detained and deported by ICE. The other risk is if this people don't teach enough you become dependent on foreign workers in a strange way for a while.

Either way nothing in the current politics seems to be actually well thought through ways to archive (relevantly) more manufacturing in the US long term. But everything seems to be designed to destroy the wealth of the majority of US citizens.

by dathinab

3/30/2026 at 4:25:59 PM

The bigger question is, why is that even the primary goal?

by skywhopper

3/30/2026 at 4:40:07 PM

I believe the idea is to support the “real” economy vs a “paper” economy. The “real” economy manufactures stuff in meat space instead of making value through abstractions like financial derivatives. The real economies are tied to a stronger middle class and national security. That’s the thesis as I understand it.

by bumby

3/30/2026 at 5:30:51 PM

A service-based economy is also a "real" economy and not a "paper" economy

by culi

3/30/2026 at 6:21:51 PM

The fundamental problem is the asymmetry of value creation. Software is perhaps the pinnacle of this, and why tech companies are so unfathomably wealthy.

A team of 10 SWEs can create a product worth $1B with the cost of 10 laptops. You get ten people worth $100M each.

To create $1B in value with any kind of manufacturing business, is going to take hundreds of people utilizing millions in various costs. You end up with something like 10,000 people worth $100k each once you wind your way through all those supply lines.

by WarmWash

3/30/2026 at 6:34:34 PM

You said it better. I think the idea is that certain "paper" economies are disproportionately valued in the economy when the dollar is strong. A strong dollar leads to offshoring manufacturing, which leads to an over weighted "paper" economy, which leads to an eroding middle class.

by bumby

3/30/2026 at 5:34:41 PM

I agree, depending on what services you’re speaking of. Although I don’t know that it meets the explicit aims of the heritage foundation (which was the OPs question).

by bumby

3/30/2026 at 4:31:21 PM

Because Conservative politics is about returning to a past that often can no longer exist.

by leche

3/30/2026 at 4:35:41 PM

Or didn't exist to begin with. All too often mythologized into an absurd caricature of the past.

by sheikhnbake

3/30/2026 at 4:39:32 PM

I didn't realize that such causes like 90+% income taxes, lower income inequality, single earner households, and high unionization rates are "conservative" too.

by gruez

3/30/2026 at 5:08:30 PM

No one actually paid 90% income taxes. I wish that myth would go away.

by CamperBob2

3/30/2026 at 5:21:09 PM

Of course because that’s how marginal tax rates work.

As to how much actual money was taxed at 91%, we don’t really have records for that but certainly the top 0.01% paid significantly more in taxes as a rate than they do today.

by conception

3/30/2026 at 5:26:26 PM

There were a lot more tax shelters at that time. You only paid those top rates if you had poor or no financial advice.

by SoftTalker

3/30/2026 at 6:36:47 PM

So nobody would mind going back to that reality right? Companies would totally pay less in taxes than they do now, right?

Oh, they fight that actually.

by mrguyorama

3/30/2026 at 7:56:56 PM

"That reality" was one in which the wealthy had countless deductions, loopholes, and shelters that were unavailable or inapplicable to everyone else, which (almost) everybody agreed was an undesirable state of affairs.

by CamperBob2

3/30/2026 at 4:36:27 PM

Actually, a past that never existed. It's pretty typically for authoritarian regimes to create idealized versions of the past as they attempt to rewrite history to better fit with their talking points and agendas.

by tmountain

3/30/2026 at 4:57:37 PM

The United States is current getting the base material for its entire economy from a country that is openly at war with it: China. If the US attacked East Tiawan because East Tiawan attacked Taiwan, East Tiawan would simply stop exporting rare earths, silver, steel, and electronics to the US. As a result the US needs to manufacture at home. So too does the EU.

by gadflyinyoureye

3/30/2026 at 4:48:40 PM

I'll dig down 3 levels of "why".

The endemic anti-intellectualism among white communities (especially rural and southern) has resulted in a steady decline of white people in well-paying professions in America. If you count the Jewish as a separate group, white people are likely a minority in corporate America. Combined with social upliftment of other groups ("wokism") and the opioid crisis (that has disproportionately affected hinterland communities but immigrant groups seem immune to), white people are sliding down the American totem pole. Trumpism, alt-right, anti-woke, and the general resurgence of racist rhetoric are basically just reactions to all this.

These people want manufacturing because manufacturing is largely considered a "white people sport". If America becomes a manufacturing-first society, the hope is that it puts white people at the front and center of American society again.

JD Vance wrote a book about this.

by roncesvalles

3/30/2026 at 5:43:05 PM

> white people are likely a minority in corporate America.

I don't see how this can possibly be true.

> that has disproportionately affected hinterland communities but immigrant groups seem immune to

Or this, especially in light of data such as this: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db549.htm

by BigTTYGothGF

3/30/2026 at 6:30:15 PM

The data you linked shows that Native Americans, Blacks and Whites have the highest per capita rates of overdose (in that order), which validates my claim.

White American overdose deaths per capita are 6x that of Asian-Americans.

by roncesvalles

3/30/2026 at 5:22:22 PM

> white people are likely a minority in corporate America.

Oh boy am I gonna need some actual data for this claim.

by ishouldstayaway

3/30/2026 at 5:34:33 PM

Even if not quite true, it doesn't change my argument since it was more about the rate of change.

You can construct the definition of white collar in a way that makes it seem like it's mostly white people, but among high paying job titles within a company, absolutely I would say there are fewer than 50% non-Jewish whites.

by roncesvalles

3/30/2026 at 6:22:17 PM

> Even if not quite true, it doesn't change my argument

This is one of the main points of bigotry. The facts don't matter. So when a person says something obviously ridiculous like

> among high paying job titles within a company, absolutely I would say there are fewer than 50% non-Jewish whites

the proper way to interpret is "I feel like there are too many unworthy people working there," where "too many" is entirely subjective and could be as few as one.

by runako

3/30/2026 at 7:32:38 PM

>"I feel like there are too many unworthy people working there"

Not at all. That was not my implication even slightly. I'm non-white btw.

by roncesvalles

3/31/2026 at 9:01:29 PM

Honestly didn't mean to say you were being a bigot there. But I would strongly suggest you spend some time in Google/census data/etc. to recalibrate your feelings. The TL;DR; is most high-paid corporate jobs in the US are held by a single demographic. Said demographic is a distinct minority of college graduates in the US.

One's information environment can mislead, but perhaps the process of finding information sources you consider objective, then studying them, will lead you to reevaluate the information diet that is creating a false picture of reality.

by runako

3/30/2026 at 5:51:58 PM

Why “non-Jewish”?

by wat10000

3/30/2026 at 6:27:19 PM

Jews are culturally isolated enough to effectively count as their own race.

Race is generally a misused concept because 99% of the time people actually mean culture, as anyone from any race can be part of a culture.

by WarmWash

3/30/2026 at 8:13:54 PM

Right, when people are talking about white people being disproportionately represented (or under-represented) in high paying corporate jobs, they're definitely looking into the cultural background of those people and determining which ones fit "non-Jewish white" rather than looking at the black guy and putting him in the "not white" category based on appearance....

In my experience, you wouldn't know most Jews are Jews unless you start quizzing them about their religious practices.

by wat10000

3/31/2026 at 5:57:31 PM

This doesn’t make sense in light of the fact that we do distinguish between Hispanic and non-Hispanic in addition to white, black, etc.

by kelipso

3/31/2026 at 8:13:51 PM

How so? That's explicitly not considered to be "race," but a separate qualifier on top of it. In any case, nothing here is going to make any sense, because the entire social construct of "race" inherently makes no sense.

by wat10000

3/30/2026 at 5:56:23 PM

You know why.

by BigTTYGothGF

3/30/2026 at 5:09:33 PM

At my FAANG in Sunnyvale, I often feel like the last white guy on earth.

But I don't resent the people who stepped up to fill the jobs.

Rather, I am disappointed that these amazing jobs were basically gifted to US residents, but my fellow white people "Opted Out" of these high paying jobs.

by HoldOnAMinute

3/30/2026 at 4:53:38 PM

It's not, they don't give two shits about workers, and their masters don't care how they make their money, just that they make it.

Manufacturing is just their preferred lie to get otherwise intelligent people to support their insanity.

by vkou

3/30/2026 at 4:39:57 PM

#1: US military war spending concerns are largely overblown. It's expending what it already has. The spending is mostly on its own internal industry i.e. the US economy (with due respect to broken window fallacy). It arguably makes it all back from the increase in oil prices.

It's a very different thing to fire a $5m missile that you imported vs one that you made domestically with all-domestic components and labor.

by roncesvalles

3/30/2026 at 6:41:23 PM

I'd say firing a missile into another country is technically firing finite or hard to acquire resources into another country. All the resources for the new rockets have to be sourced from somewhere and it's not really important where they came from. They are a real cost not some circular funding. It's more or less blowing up big piles of cash that can not easily be replaced.

by BadBadJellyBean

3/30/2026 at 5:55:02 PM

Why is it different? If it’s foreign made then you need to export $5 million of stuff to pay for it, so the economic effect should be similar.

Expending what it already has is true but doesn’t really help. It’s not like we’re going to sit here with a reduced stockpile forever. Those munitions will be replaced. The fact that the spending comes after using them rather than before doesn’t change the equation much.

by wat10000

3/30/2026 at 7:14:33 PM

They will be replaced, but most likely with something better. Which we would have done for modernization purposes eventually anyway, while disposing of the old stock.

Our wars are pre-paid for. America spends $900B/year on the military. Use it or lose it.

by roncesvalles

3/30/2026 at 10:39:41 PM

I don't think they expire that quickly. It's true they would have been replaced eventually, but this is accelerating that schedule for some munitions by a decade or two.

That $900B/year figure is for peacetime (or what passes for peacetime in an empire constantly involved in small conflicts around the world) and peacetime rates of equipment/munitions replacement. This is the most intense air war the US has been in since at least Desert Storm, maybe Vietnam. That level of expenditure is not already paid for.

by wat10000

3/30/2026 at 4:38:07 PM

You should check your hunch against the reality, at least periodically. The US dollar has strengthened since the current US-Iran conflict started.

by raincole

3/30/2026 at 5:33:53 PM

Yes it tends to strengthen during times of conflict as countries buy more dollars in response. That's kinda the whole gimmick with the petrodollar. War is good for the US

But if Iran does successfully force countries to stop using the petrodollar by only allowing countries trading in yuan through the strait, then we could actually see that reverse. IMO destroying the petrodollar is the primary clear "victory" Iran could achieve from this war

by culi

3/30/2026 at 7:23:05 PM

Reserve currency status entirely depends on how effective the issuer is at dropping a precision-guided munition over anyone who dares to counterfeit it.

China is actually the second-best contender now due to its growing military prowess. But it still might not be at the level where it can carry out the aforementioned task anywhere in the world without exception, like the US can. Hence the dollar will most likely stay.

by roncesvalles

3/30/2026 at 9:58:24 PM

I'm not seeing the US bomb North Korea though

by nextaccountic

3/30/2026 at 10:13:55 PM

The US used enough financial sanctions and diplomacy to make North Korea stop doing it. If NK did it on a large enough scale and persisted, we'd absolutely have a war with them.

by roncesvalles

3/30/2026 at 4:52:12 PM

I have checked. It’s too early to tell but anyway relative price is not what matters. What matters is purchasing power. EUR purchasing power was better and improving compared to USD. And check out interest rate derivatives — the euro has actually overtaken the dollar as the #1 currency in this massive market.

by znnajdla

3/30/2026 at 5:11:01 PM

Purchasing power for what? Consumer goods? Most purchasing power calculations are completely bogus because they rarely compare goods of equal quality.

A neighborhood with just a Walmart doesn't have higher purchasing power than a neighborhood with just a Whole Foods.

by roncesvalles

3/30/2026 at 5:38:07 PM

Commodities. Raw materials with which all goods and services are made. Coffee, sugar, wheat, pound of beef, gasoline. Also products which are supposed to be identical like a Big Mac. Purchasing power is hard to measure but it’s a question studied deeply by economists.

by znnajdla

3/30/2026 at 5:47:46 PM

Even the Big Mac index is flawed because it's not quite the same burger, since it's not made in the same regulatory environment, or by people compensated equally fairly.

by roncesvalles

3/30/2026 at 5:59:37 PM

All measures are flawed but can you do better?

by znnajdla

3/30/2026 at 7:27:14 PM

No, my point is that there is no such thing as purchasing power. An iPhone doesn't cost less in China or India even though their "purchasing power" is much higher on paper.

Having "high purchasing power" just means that you have access to low quality options that people in "low purchasing power" countries don't because there isn't a market for it.

by roncesvalles

3/31/2026 at 2:24:04 AM

One of the biggest myths that people believe is that war is an economic stimulus. In fact, the US entry into World War II delayed the economic recovery from the Great Depression (and created conditions for a recession after the war). One of the reasons that Republicans were so opposed to entry into the war was because they (correctly) believed that it would delay the US economic recovery. Wars have never been correlated with economic growth.

by dhosek

3/30/2026 at 5:32:35 PM

In my worst cynical days, I think that's exactly the plan.

Erase US government debt via hyper-inflation, and let the people that will still have liquidity buy all remaining assets the middle class will be desperate to sell at pennies on the dollar.

by elzbardico

3/30/2026 at 6:53:07 PM

This kills the golden goose.

by RealityVoid

3/30/2026 at 4:34:33 PM

anyone who sees this are early early early, yes it's very likely to happen, probabilistically.

by kingleopold

3/30/2026 at 4:32:59 PM

> Europe and the Gulf diversifying both their investments and defense purchases.

With what? The euro, yuan? Or weapons from france?

I hate to admit it, but it's much less that the US is great because it's the reserve currency, and much more that the world reserve currency is the dollar because the US is what it is.

Weapons are expensive, and it only makes sense to buy them from a country that specializes in them. And a country that makes weapons at huge scale is likely to be big enough tilt the direction of the country to be all the ugly things the modern US military industrial complex is.

by preommr

3/30/2026 at 6:10:04 PM

The US isn't delivering Patriot missiles to Switzerland. Switzerland froze paiements. The US unilaterally took the money Switzerland escrowed to buy F35s, put them towards paying for Patriot missiles they won't deliver, and asked Switzerland to refill the F35 escrow account. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been siphoned off.

https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/2026/article/les-usa-detourne...

The US is not a reliable weapon supplier anymore. Contracts don't mean anything anymore.

by Arodex

3/30/2026 at 4:38:27 PM

I'm having trouble reconciling this comment with reports that US stockpiles are already being depleted by the Iran war. At this point the US weapons production seems relatively specialized and inefficient, not "huge scale." Someone more informed care to weigh in?

by fwipsy

3/30/2026 at 6:55:52 PM

Raytheon is about half the size of Pepsico, with about the same profit margin.

The supposed "Military Industrial Complex" that Ike warned about died years later, and the end of the Cold War buried what little remained. The F-35 is basically the only big military construction project we've had in a very long time, and it comes at a few hundred airframes per year.

In WW2, we were producing 10k+ rather advanced airframes every single year. In each category.

The company that designed and built the M1 Abrams Tank doesn't really exist anymore for example. We, like Russia, might not really have a capability of building 4000 hulls in a short timeframe, which is table stakes if we are actually concerned about a war with China. We were able to do these things back in WW2 because we, through central planning (not a free market), reorganized like 1/20th of the economy into building war assets. FDR decreed that we build 120k Shermans. We eventually managed 50k.

A lot of the supposed "graft" and pork of the defense industry is about giving it a lot of leeway just to stick around. Once you lose domain knowledge it's gone forever, you have to expend considerable resources to rebuild and recollect it. No, documentation doesn't count. Reading all of our notes hasn't fixed the fact that Russia and China can't build the exceptional jet engines we can.

by mrguyorama

3/31/2026 at 5:14:04 AM

I don’t think central planning is the only factor. Ukraine is leading a massively heroic drone innovation effort with very good results. In 2026 there are internet blackouts in Russia to hide the social chaos created by 1000+ drone strikes daily in deep Russian territory. It’s not a centrally planned war effort in Ukraine. It’s dozens of startups which started in people’s basements and bombed out ruins. The main factor is not central planning, but rather an existential threat which forced a massively heroic war effort.

by znnajdla

3/31/2026 at 6:17:44 AM

Thanks, this is interesting and makes sense.

> A lot of the supposed "graft" and pork of the defense industry is about giving it a lot of leeway just to stick around.

Even if they stick around, will they maintain an edge? Seems like their incentives are similar to a professor on tenure - do the minimum, collect paycheck. Even if they are still creating cutting-edge weapons, could they scale up efficiently when needed? Just read Casey Handmer's extremely critical posts on Orion/SLS; I would not trust the side of Lockheed/Boeing he describes with critical national security capabilities.

by fwipsy

3/30/2026 at 5:58:16 PM

I’m probably not more informed, but it seems to me that it can be both. The rate of expenditure in a medium-sized war will far outstrip peacetime production needs. Even if you’re arming half the planet’s militaries, your peacetime production rate will be much smaller than what’s being used now, even if you’re building a lot by non-wartime standards.

by wat10000

3/30/2026 at 5:03:54 PM

Weapons are only expensive if you want them to be expensive.

Ukraine are butchering Russians for 870 USD per dead soldier.

The USA has the most expensive weapons in the world, the problem is that much of it is obsolete.

by Gud

3/30/2026 at 6:00:17 PM

Ukraine butchers soldiers for cheap. The US drops a bomb through the Atatollah’s bedroom window for not-cheap. It’s not clear to me which is more cost effective in the end. (Ignoring for a moment that US strategy in this war seems to be nonexistent. Imagine these capabilities were being used with some actual goal in mind besides “if we take their king then we win.”)

by wat10000

3/31/2026 at 7:16:24 AM

There is a big difference between defending against an unprovoked invasion vs assassinating an unsuspecting target.

Ukraine has shown themselves very capable of surgical offensive strikes using cheap drones deep inside enemy territory , so your comparison is not valid.

The US is also bombing girls going to school.

by Gud

3/31/2026 at 12:43:46 PM

You seem to be confusing my comment about cost effectiveness with an analysis of morality.

by wat10000

3/30/2026 at 5:01:58 PM

The US is defaulting on military orders to Europe and Germany just announced a 1 trillion euro rearmament plan. Europe is manufacturing big time. The Gulf states as of yesterday are now buying from Ukraine for fucks sake.

by znnajdla

3/30/2026 at 5:04:04 PM

Add the fact that some countries are using other currencies to trade oil and goods.

Also, some countries started to use other systems beside SWIFT to transfer money.

by DeathArrow

3/30/2026 at 4:39:52 PM

It is by design. How else can you make trillionaires?

by dandanua

3/30/2026 at 4:50:29 PM

Zimbabwe did make a 100 trillion note.

by whynotmaybe

3/30/2026 at 3:57:35 PM

I think the idea is crash the stock market to force interest rate drop to refinance the massive debt.

by unstatusthequo

3/30/2026 at 4:51:33 PM

That's not how bonds work

by bloppe

3/30/2026 at 4:26:50 PM

Huh? Wouldn't bond yields go up if stocks went down?

by senderista

3/30/2026 at 4:46:50 PM

It doesn’t have to make sense to be the plan.

by mulmen

3/31/2026 at 12:21:16 AM

Bond yields go up when bonds are harder to sell. They’re harder to sell when the present more risk. The biggest risk to bond holders is inflation. So bond yields tend to go up when inflation expectations rise.

by IAmGraydon

3/30/2026 at 4:36:54 PM

yess and real final episode will be fed printing into that high bond yield, after that it's just full fun :) especially for all boomers.

by kingleopold

3/30/2026 at 3:56:18 PM

It could also be a play to squeeze China or similar nation dependent on middle east oil. USA semicon production not ready, if there were signals that China was ready for a play on Taiwan maybe this is a gambit to buy some time.

by engineer_22

3/30/2026 at 4:02:11 PM

Is China really dependent on middle-east oil? I read that they had been diversifying in preparation for an energy resource fight for some time now. For example, they've massively invested in Solar power generation, are building a 300-400 billion dollar gas pipeline from Russia, already buy a lot of oil to from Russia, and also purchased from Venezuela (though how that's going now is anybody's guess). They also have a good relationship with most of the players in the middle-east and helped repair ties between the Saudis and the Iranians.

by thisislife2

3/30/2026 at 4:01:20 PM

That would be a double whammy for America then: a devalued dollar and higher oil prices. Both cause inflation.

China doesn’t seem to be squeezed when they seem to have a deal with Iran to buy in yuan.

by znnajdla

3/30/2026 at 4:21:22 PM

Quick note that "devalued dollar" is inflation, not a cause of inflation.

by dboreham

3/30/2026 at 4:56:09 PM

Inflation is about what goes on inside the country. So you can have inflation internally while the domestic currency strengthens against foreign currencies, and vice versa.

If your currency is falling against foreign currencies but prices are also dropping domestically, you get deflation. This was happening in China a couple of years ago, and they were exporting this deflation to other countries.

by joshuaissac

3/30/2026 at 4:08:34 PM

Note that most of this period falls before the modern inflation target was established in 1995. In the past 30 years we've had 75% accumulated annual inflation (aka prices have increased be a factor of exp(0.75) = 2.1) of which 16% (aka 21% of the total) took place during an inflation excursion (which lasted 2.5 years aka 8% of the total time period).

If anything the data points at "inflation targeting works and is producing slow and steady inflation" rather than "inflation comes in concentrated bursts".

by cperciva

3/30/2026 at 4:12:41 PM

The devaluation also mostly happened during the periods that everyone calls good old times now.

by raincole

3/30/2026 at 4:30:24 PM

Hum... I don't think people refer to the world wars as good times.

Out of them, there's one single interval that most people that talk about it refer as "the end of the good times" (but yeah, I've seen people refer as good times too) and the COVID pandemic.

by marcosdumay

3/30/2026 at 4:44:29 PM

Who calls WWI, stagflation or Covid good old times? Only the post-WWII boom was really a good time.

by joelwilliamson

3/30/2026 at 4:29:36 PM

there was wage growth

by trgn

3/30/2026 at 4:40:58 PM

Yeah, didn't people used to make like $10/week as the median wage at the turn of the 20th century? I agree that we have big problems now, but I feel like this analysis is deeply flawed without the inclusion of wage data.

by tmountain

3/30/2026 at 5:17:52 PM

Wage data, population growth, overall consumption, credit (and guarantees against it) are all drivers of inflation.

Look at student loans vs the cost of college:

1958: Federal program to encourage science and engineering. 1976: Remove restrictions on bankruptcy dismissal of this debt. 2005: Same rules for private loans.

Today college has a (as someone here so eloquently put it) a cruise ship ascetic, and has far more "administration" than "eduction" in terms of raw staff.

Tv went from an expensive box (fixed cost) to cable (monthly fee) to on demand programing (several monthly fees, and with ad's).

A phone used to be a single item in your house with a monthly fee. It was an item so durable that you could beat a robber with it and still call the police (see old att, black rotary phone). Now its an item per person in a household, that you can easily loose, might break if you drop it, and costs any where from 200 to 1500 dollars.

None of this is inflation in the traditional sense, but it does impact the velocity of all money in the system, and puts pressure on individual spending in a way that isnt even accounted for in this chart.

I wont even get started on housing, but I will leave this chart behind and ask those who care to point to the housing crisis on it: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

by zer00eyz

3/30/2026 at 4:26:43 PM

I believe the broader reason for an inflation target is to increase the value of "doing something" as opposed to "doing nothing" with money. Of course, like most policies, this acts on people with way too much of it and skews the perception of control and locus of control to those entities with too much.

by cyanydeez

3/30/2026 at 4:39:51 PM

That's a bit of falacy. If inflation target were 0%, people would still have an oportunity cost of doing nothing compared to deposits, bonds and other "zero risk" investments. You just stop punishing people that has their wealth in form of cash savings.

2% is an arbitrary number that just looks good and seems to work. The issue is that that target is very much not set into stone, as central banks often disregard or take too long to take action when inflation shoots up. And never, ever do they try to compensate afterwards with a lower target for a time.

You can have a government spend way beyond its income making inflation spike, eroding their own debt at the cost of cash savings purchase power and the central bank just sit put and wait until inflation runs too hot to then increase rates that then cut way before inflation is on target. As we are having right now in basically every country on earth.

by PowerElectronix

3/30/2026 at 4:35:53 PM

Not to reply against you, just to add clarification. This is the reason why a slightly positive inflation rate is normally targeted. Theoretically, it would be entirely possible to target 0% inflation, but then you are so close to possible deflation, that most people would simply save up money instead of buying things from the economy.

by siruwastaken

3/30/2026 at 4:47:45 PM

>"that most people would simply save up money instead of buying things from the economy."

And making it not an option leads to the situations where rich buy assets that are only go up and become richer. Average Joe meanwhile does not own assets and gets poorer and poorer

by FpUser

3/30/2026 at 5:01:21 PM

Whoever wrote this article seems to think a strong dollar is fundamental to a strong economy. But, notice where it is on this timeline the only prolonged strengthening of the dollar that shows up. Yep, you've got it, the depth of the great depression. And, notice where the WWII and postwar weakening of the dollar led -- that's right, to in many ways the most prosperous economy the world has ever seen.

Because we try to figure out how things like "strengthening" and "weakening" of the dollar fit in, and we actually have policies much more intelligent than, weaking of the dollar! Collapse is imminent!

by Booktrope

3/30/2026 at 5:04:55 PM

And a strong currency usually means weak manufacturing. And I don't know how a country can be strong without a solid manufacturing sector. Like, when we a war breaks out, we ask our enemies to sell us components and medical key ingredients?

by hintymad

3/30/2026 at 5:08:15 PM

If you aren't self-sufficient in energy, food, and to a lesser extent raw materials, a weak currency means everything is expensive.

by iso1631

3/30/2026 at 5:07:19 PM

Didn't know Switzerland was a "weak" manufacturer (currently one of the strongest currencies there is, also in wide use).

by fakedang

3/30/2026 at 6:53:31 PM

Yeah, I'm sure there can be exceptions. When the US was super strong in manufacturing back in the 50s, the US dollar was also strong, or at least relatively speaking? That said, the US over the years outsourced their manufacturing, closing their domestic factories. A strong US dollar seemed have played a big role in such outsourcing.

by hintymad

3/30/2026 at 5:29:03 PM

They export something else.

by vessenes

3/30/2026 at 6:26:42 PM

You're on to something, aren't you?

Like... Maybe manufacturing isn't the end all?

by izacus

3/30/2026 at 3:45:45 PM

1950-1985 and 1985-now are pretty steady. Decreased inflation volatility over time.

I think your chart shows the "that inflation slowly erodes purchasing power over time." That doesn't mean there aren't periods of change - if you study economic history at all you know about the Great Depression and stagflation - but for ~50 years it's been pretty well managed.

by milesskorpen

3/30/2026 at 4:00:30 PM

This article over and over describes inflation as a tax or destruction, without backing those claims up. It would be a much stronger article if it focused on the main point rather than having it interspersed with the author's personal opinion of changes in the denominator of a fraction.

by alright2565

3/30/2026 at 5:57:34 PM

>This article over and over describes inflation as a tax or destruction, without backing those claims up

Inflation due to money supply increase being like a tax is a fundamental economic result that doesn't need to be rehashed. If you were to counterfeit a trillion dollars and spend it, what happens? You get more things, reducing the remaining supply of things, and everyone else has the same amount of money but chasing a smaller amount of things, so their purchasing power per dollar goes down. It acts as a wealth transfer from other currency holders to yourself. The same applies if the government creates money, but in that case it's called a tax because wealth transfer to the government is termed taxation.

by logicchains

3/30/2026 at 4:02:05 PM

[flagged]

by latentframe

3/30/2026 at 4:32:23 PM

Mods, can we please remove this and other obviously AI-generated comments from this account?

by senderista

3/30/2026 at 6:00:00 PM

This reads like every founder-posted comment from a YC company going back 10 years. "obviously AI-generated" is a stretch.

by runako

3/30/2026 at 7:12:08 PM

I think the AI tells are pretty obvious.

by senderista

3/30/2026 at 4:07:01 PM

> This article over and over describes inflation as a tax or destruction, without backing those claims up...

C'mon. Whether you agree or not, any time spent in the field will expose you to this philosophy. If you disagree, ignore. There's no need to go through implicit ideas.

by uticus

3/30/2026 at 3:52:15 PM

> Instead, $100 in 1914 is worth $3.05 today.

Doesn't that mean $3.05 in 1914 us worth $100 today?

by gwbas1c

3/30/2026 at 4:00:39 PM

The purchasing power of $3.05 in 1914 would require $100 in today's time. A bag of "stuff" worth $100 today could have been purchased for $3.05 in 1914.

Technically, it does mean that $3.05 from 1914 is worth $100 today, but that's not a useful way of thinking about this. I.e., if your great-grandfather put $3.05 in an envelope in 1914 and you opened it today, it's still $3.05 worth of money (ignoring wheat pennies being a collectors items and whatnot).

by eykanal

3/30/2026 at 3:57:39 PM

I'm pretty sure you are right. Or to emphasize the devaluation, "$100 today would be worth only $3.05 in 1914."

I think it is astonishing that we accept that in a best case scenario of sustained 2% inflation, we are literally planning for the value of the dollar to be cut in half every 36 years.

by kogus

3/30/2026 at 4:15:05 PM

Dollars that people hold onto, instead of using to purchase something else of value, are effectively worthless to everyone.

by empthought

3/30/2026 at 5:45:08 PM

That means there are less dollars in circulation, which is the opposite of inflation.

by rationalist

3/31/2026 at 5:37:03 PM

Yes, I wasn’t clear.

I was offering a reason why dollars “losing value” is not actually a thing to worry about. If they didn’t lose value, people would hold onto them instead of spending them. Which is objectively a loss to everyone, regardless of how you decide to denominate it.

by empthought

3/30/2026 at 4:16:21 PM

>I think it is astonishing that we accept that in a best case scenario of sustained 2% inflation, we are literally planning for the value of the dollar to be cut in half every 36 years.

Our system is designed to encourage asset ownership, not cash saving. If you stuff it under a mattress for 36 years, yeah you'll get fleeced. But buying assets is the way to keep up; an investment of $100 in the S&P500 in 1990 and never touched would be worth $4,120.93 today.

by ramesh31

3/30/2026 at 3:55:13 PM

Yeah, they must have gotten it the wrong way around.

by stavros

3/30/2026 at 4:14:03 PM

Both are valid, depending on perspective. The joy of English.

by win311fwg

3/30/2026 at 9:04:13 PM

No, it's very clearly a typo and doesn't depend on perspective. English isn't that ambiguous.

by gwbas1c

3/30/2026 at 4:32:01 PM

I'm having trouble coming up with a valid use case of the way it's written, mind sharing?

by silisili

3/30/2026 at 5:17:20 PM

"worth" can have two meanings in this context. $100 from 1917 can be worth exactly $100 today. Or it can be worth what you can buy with it.

Some folks will see a $100 bill from the era and see an old $100 bill. Some folks will imagine what that $100 took to save back then, and what it bought.

FWIW my brain automatically went with "the goods that can be bought with $100" - such as what I could buy in a grocery store today with $100 would be about what I could buy with $3 back then.

I never considered the other reading until this thread. It was obvious to me the author meant "you can buy 97% less stuff today with the same $100".

by phil21

3/30/2026 at 6:34:42 PM

I don't understand how you mean. They say $100 back then, in what meaning is a $100 bill back then worth the same as having $3 today?

by stavros

3/30/2026 at 7:59:26 PM

I think it's used to convey that the buying power has been reduced. If you have a $100 basket of goods (as measured in 1914 dollars), $100 in 1914 allows you to buy 1 basket of goods. Due to the devaluation, today spending $100 would only give you a $3.05 basket of goods (as measured in 1914 dollars).

It's a bit of an odd comparison since you're using two different units for dollars to compare the basket vs purchasing dollar. The clearer way to say it is that today's $100 basket of goods is equivalent to $3.95 basket of goods of 1914.

by krackers

3/30/2026 at 6:38:47 PM

- Shift back to exchange based taxes away from income taxes.

- Spin down the federal reserve, establish a US bank and adjust the self-loans against the future into a solid repayment plan at a minimal interest rate.

- Reestablished precious metal backing to core currencies (gold, silver, etc.)

- Establish constitutional amendment establishing non-living entities and restricting speech rights as such. If a CEO wants to donate personal funds, cool, no corporate backing to political organizations full-stop.

- Strong protections and some spending in favor of domestic security and production.

- Drop subsidy spending for GMO commodity foods and byproducts. Eliminate GRAS protections against any "food" that didn't exist in the US food supply before 1880. FDA acknowledgement when more than one region considers an engineered food product as unsafe, minimally processed animal and plant products excluded.

by tracker1

3/30/2026 at 4:17:08 PM

The graph should really use a log scale. At this point, a 50% drop in value would look tiny on that graph with the linear scale.

by bloppe

3/30/2026 at 4:29:44 PM

I'm trying to read this and not feel like an idiot.

Can someone explain to me how post-covid is considered one of the 4 episodes?

it looks to me that the dips at 1933-1936 or 1956-1958 are much more significant - are these just "regular" inflation? Are we ignoring these because we can't tie them to some specific current event?

by arkensaw

3/30/2026 at 4:33:59 PM

I think probably the interest rate is higher, but the value as a proportion of the starting value on LHS is less significant, compared with the periods you mention. If you look at the monthly interest rates at the bottom, it seems to support this notion.

by hardlianotion

3/30/2026 at 4:33:01 PM

Appeal to readers' recency bias. Covid is the most recent big change for the readers so the article has to make it more significant than it actually was. If it only talked about things happened <40years people would be 'so what?' and bounce out.

by raincole

3/30/2026 at 4:41:59 PM

money supply increased more than all those during the covid.

by kingleopold

3/30/2026 at 3:59:18 PM

Another way to frame this is that during inflationary episodes, debt became easier to repay.

My parents bought a house in the 1970s. Because of the inflation that occurred during that time, incomes and expenses rose, yet long-term debt obligations such as fixed mortgages remained unchanged; their mortgage payment was the same in year 30 as in year 1.

I guess another way to say it is that during an inflationary period, the people who HAVE money suffer the loss of its purchasing power. But the people who OWE money benefit from the dollar not being what it used to be.

by jawns

3/30/2026 at 9:02:04 PM

Currency purchasing power isn't a very meaningful metric. It should be accompanied by the level of wages, at least. Besides, you can't compare any consumer data of the pre-tech/pre-plastic period before the 50's with subsequent ones. The social and technological frames were immensely different.

by tsoukase

3/30/2026 at 5:15:41 PM

Why don't they refer to the 3rd 'episode' as Vietnam - since the timeline lines up pretty nicely with that downward slope (and it's more than just the 70's as is highlighted in the article)?

If seeing this graph has taught me anything it's that war is hell on many levels - including economically.

This article also doesn't seem to account for the median price of a single family home.

by danesparza

3/30/2026 at 3:54:58 PM

The scary part is not the number. It is that most people living through it barely noticed while it was happening.

by latenode

3/30/2026 at 9:30:35 PM

The graph should be on a log scale. Inflation earlier from a higher value is magnified relative to inflation later from a lower value.

by Nifty3929

3/30/2026 at 3:47:03 PM

The cumulative duration of these four episodes looks to be about 30 years, so about a quarter of the total time period looked at

Interesting, but not quite as dramatic as I assumed from the title.

by anonymous_sorry

3/30/2026 at 3:48:45 PM

[dead]

by latentframe

3/30/2026 at 5:59:05 PM

Shouldn't the first chart have a logarithmic scale on the vertical? I don't trust anything using linear scales where they're a bad fit...

by tasuki

3/30/2026 at 4:52:23 PM

Fiscal deficit. That is the main reason by far of Dollar's destruction. Everything else is wrong or over-thinking.

by aglavine

3/30/2026 at 4:41:28 PM

The only thing sadder than AI-generated comments on human articles is human comments on AI-generated articles.

by twodave

3/30/2026 at 4:26:59 PM

The value of the dollar over time is largely meaningless unless you are a dollar investor (i.e. sit on lots of cash in consumer tier bank accounts). Generally once you have enough cash that this would meaningfully impact you, you are already beyond sitting on cash.

At the end of the day, the dollar or any other currency, is just a conversion tool for [value created] to [goods/services received]. A ratio of 3/1 is equivalent to a ratio of 300/100, even if 3 and 1 are 99% smaller than 300 and 100. The numerator and denominator can move out of sync, creating periods of strain and arbitrage while they equilibrate, but what really matters is how much xyz you get per hour of work at job abc. And overwhelmingly we are leagues beyond 1914 in that regard.

by WarmWash

3/30/2026 at 4:33:22 PM

It's meaningful because you pay capital gains on nominal increase in dollar value even if there is no real change in value. Inflation is thus a tax on realized non-gains at roughly 1/5th the cumulative inflation.

by mothballed

3/30/2026 at 6:31:21 PM

I'd argue that's more of an issue with the tax code than a fundamental problem with inflation. In and ideal world we would be able to write off losses to inflation, I'm sure many financial geeks have griped about this before, heh

by WarmWash

3/30/2026 at 5:27:17 PM

Workers also pay more taxes when (or if) they get inflation-matching raises. Capital paying taxes on inflation gains isn't unfair.

by triceratops

3/30/2026 at 3:52:22 PM

Why do wars tend to devalue the dollar?

by tines

3/30/2026 at 4:16:11 PM

In addition to the already-stated causes of government issuing currency necessary to meet war spending and the fact that war spending produces destruction of economic capability rather than development, wars tend to introduce trade barriers and divert resources away from productive tasks. Whether barriers are legal (tariffs, embargoes), or simply higher premiums due to increased risk, less trade happens, which raises prices (inflation). Economists also really hate number-go-down even when down is good, so policy is oriented towards making sure deflation never gets a chance in the interwar development periods.

by t-3

3/30/2026 at 3:56:58 PM

Wars usually involve the destruction of assets. If the same amount of money chases fewer assets, the money has less value.

by kelseyfrog

3/30/2026 at 3:55:04 PM

The government issues a lot of money to pay for the war but doesn't tend to increase taxes enough to make up for it, so inflation is high.

by NoraCodes

3/30/2026 at 3:57:42 PM

Weapons cost ALOT and do very little to increase the future economy.

It's the issue Russia is facing right now in Ukraine. Even if Putin wanted to stop, his economy has turned entirely wartime, when it ends the country crashes on itself.

by elictronic

3/31/2026 at 6:00:48 AM

Crashes? How is that possible. You could take the money spent on bombs and do anything with it including helicopter money or digging holes and it would be better spent.

by rightbyte

3/30/2026 at 3:56:11 PM

Money printing and expensive bonds?

by betaby

3/30/2026 at 4:17:23 PM

Only half of the incidents listed were actually full-scale wars (WWI and II). The other two incidents are an oil shock and a pandemic.

The commonality between all four of these incidents is that they correspond to severe supply shocks:

- During WWI and WWII, industrial supply was rerouted by force to the war effort, leaving normal consumer demand unfulfilled.

- During the oil crisis of the 70s, a critical energy input to the American economy massively increased in price due to sanctions placed on America.

- During the COVID-19 pandemic, a significant chunk of workers were paid not to work, as a form of deliberate supply destruction to avoid the spread of a novel coronavirus.

In a "normal" economy, supply is flexible enough that you can print money and nobody even notices. The supply curve is smooth and gradual, so prices only rise a little. When supply is constrained, however, prices rise to whatever value is necessary to curtail demand, because they have to. The supply curve is a brick wall.

by kmeisthax

3/30/2026 at 3:56:03 PM

(Guess)

A lot of money is printed.

Also, war is not an activity that generates wealth (but to some it does, obviously).

by moralestapia

3/30/2026 at 3:48:48 PM

so long and income exceeds or keeps up with inflation growth, it doesn't matter

by bubbleRefuge

3/30/2026 at 4:20:49 PM

Right, then: 1910 normal salary was 200-400 (say 300), if 97% of value of the dollar was lost in 2026 the normal salary should be 6666 - 13333 (say $10 000)

by 6510

3/30/2026 at 3:47:10 PM

Has to be taken in light of median income too right?

by mkagenius

3/30/2026 at 4:56:03 PM

"By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." -- John Maynard Keynes

by hackthemack

3/30/2026 at 5:18:09 PM

You can pick arbitrary points and stick them on the graph. It appears that my family are the inflation stoppers. Calm periods correspond to weddings and childbirths in my family. As the first in the line to marry a Chinese person, I have broken the rule and my daughter’s arrival has triggered a dollar collapse.

The moon gods have spoken in the tea leaves and we have lost the Mandate of Heaven.

by renewiltord

3/30/2026 at 4:24:53 PM

This is a bizarre framing that totally misunderstands inflation, money, and macroeconomics.

by skywhopper

3/30/2026 at 4:14:08 PM

> The Great Inflation of 1968–1982 alone accounts for 30.2% of all cumulative purchasing power destruction since 1914 — more than WWI and WWII combined. During this 15-year period, the CPI rose from 34.1 to 97.7, nearly tripling the price level.

In 1971, the United States ended the convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively bringing the Bretton Woods system to an end and rendering the dollar a fiat currency.

This allowed for the global reserve currency to float which allowed for global credit expansion at the cost of the dollar value but with the benefit of more overall dollars (monetary velocity increasing)

This is what politicians want because it makes the dollar printing machine the most powerful thing, hence why everyone hung on the fedchair words every few months.

So the USD is already hyperinflated but the price relative to other currencies is still high.

Once that price collapses (and it eventually will and increasingly soon) the entire US will look like the rust belt.

by AndrewKemendo

3/30/2026 at 3:42:16 PM

How about other currencies?

by p1esk

3/30/2026 at 3:51:27 PM

Only USD for now. Would be interesting to compare — especially currencies that went through hyperinflation episodes.

by latentframe

3/30/2026 at 7:28:34 PM

We are so much better off than in 1914 that it's ridiculous to even worry about the comparative value of an arbitrary unit of value exchange.

by readthenotes1

3/30/2026 at 4:51:05 PM

The most notable anomalous event if you zoom back to more like 1814 instead of 1914 is that ever since the US completely decoupled from the gold standard, it switched into purely inflationary mode rather than often bouncing back. From the 1800-1900 pretty much the entire time was spent at worst 1/2 to 2x the average value. Far less variance than after the introduction of federal reserve and taking off the gold standard, where purchasing power was destroyed to something like <1/10th of the century average.

by mothballed

3/30/2026 at 4:33:26 PM

They make it sound like it’s a bad thing.

by d--b

3/30/2026 at 6:11:41 PM

And yet the feels surrounding $1M net worth have not been and likely will never be adjusted for this.

by LogicFailsMe

3/30/2026 at 6:13:56 PM

Sure they will. Making “$100,000” used to be a crazy milestone. Not anymore.

Likewise, a millionaire isn’t a millionaire until about $10M.

by Spooky23

3/30/2026 at 4:35:16 PM

What inspired Trump to do this? The Epstein files?

by chistev

3/30/2026 at 6:35:03 PM

I think fuentes' theory holds merit: It's that in running for re-election trump was trying to avoid prison, so he was desparately looking for approval from many disparate and conflicting interest groups (some anti-war, some anti-immigration, some pro-immigration) one of which was pro-zionist. So not so much the epstien files but more just impending criminal charges in general (The epstien conspiracy voters were actually one of the interest groups trump wooed).

I also read an article here that suggested trump's bombing of iran during peace talks at the same time as israeli attacks established that if israel attacked then USA would also be a valid combatant (which wasn't the case previously). So this bombing of iran's nuclear facilities earlier was sort of a trap that made it so that israel could rope us into any conflict at any later time- which they did this time, they threatened to strike iran with or without us.

Lastly, I imagine that success in decapitating the venezuelan regime gave trump and his cabinet confidence in going to war.

This whole war seems good for israel but in the long term it doesn't really pan out in the long term for them either. It is sort of the cart leading the horse. There is a theory proposed by prof. Jiang (PredictiveHistory) that this war was catalyzed by a certain apocolyptic eschatology of jews/christians in a couple high places. Whether the Netanyahu or Trump adminstration is captured by this chohort or just pursing short term goals is hard to say, but this is the only explanation I can find for who benefits long-term from this action.

by beeflet

3/30/2026 at 4:02:12 PM

[dead]

by 3yr-i-frew-up

3/30/2026 at 2:50:22 PM

[flagged]

by latentframe

3/30/2026 at 4:26:44 PM

This is very obviously an AI generated comment which is against the guidelines.

by hcolomb

3/30/2026 at 3:49:18 PM

Why didn't you use log-scale? It seems like the obvious call.

by hyperpape

3/30/2026 at 3:54:11 PM

IMO the first graph would make a lot more sense when plotted in log scale.

Also this way of framing "As of February 2026, the US dollar has lost 96.9% of its purchasing power relative to January 1914. This means that $100 in 1914 would buy only approximately $3.05 worth of goods today" is of course math-correct but difficult to understand intuitively.

I think it makes more sense to explain it in the opposite direction or in both directions: "$100 in 1914 would buy only approximately $3.05 worth of goods today, or equivalently, $100 in 1914 is worth ~ $3278 nowdays (because 100 / 3.05 ~= 32.78 "

This also makes it easier to understand that the term "millionaire == person that has 1 million USD" only makes sense around 1914, because the equivalent amount of wealth nowdays would be "millionaire == person that has 32 million USD"

Anyways, I liked a lot this visualization https://mlde8o0xa4ew.i.optimole.com/cb:VNTn.d9a/w:auto/h:aut... that visualizes the compression in time of the big value changes.

by windenntw

3/30/2026 at 4:20:06 PM

>Anyways, I liked a lot this visualization https://mlde8o0xa4ew.i.optimole.com/cb:VNTn.d9a/w:auto/h:aut... that visualizes the compression in time of the big value changes.

It's still a bad chart because of the "the great inflation destroyed more value than both world wars combined" claim, for two reasons:

1. It's not clear (from the chart at least), that the claim is true. 20.0% + 18.1% = 38.1%, greater than 30.2%, but the quote claims otherwise. True, the red and orange segments cover more than just ww1 and ww2, but if more granular data is available why not show it?

2. "destroyed more value" might be technically true if we define "value destroyed = inflation", but it's a non-intuitive definition to use. If you asked someone about the value destroyed in ww1/ww2, they'll talk about europe being bombed out, not higher inflation.

by gruez

3/30/2026 at 4:15:17 PM

Also if you had that $100 in 1914 dollar coins it would actually be worth $5,400 in silver.

If you had $100 in 1914 $10 coins you would have $24,800 in gold.

by RobotToaster

3/30/2026 at 3:56:20 PM

Pretty close to the 80/20 rule of thumb.

by post-it

3/30/2026 at 3:43:18 PM

I'm not really convinced this data falsifies the narrative of a slow erosion. It's just the Pareto principle in action. I bet if you graphed the erosion of a hill you'd see the same pattern.

by SpicyLemonZest

3/30/2026 at 3:45:37 PM

Slowly and then all at once, as they say

by steveBK123

3/30/2026 at 5:03:22 PM

I thought that was Hemingway specifically?

by soperj

3/30/2026 at 4:06:53 PM

The Gompertz function strikes again.

by golemotron

3/30/2026 at 3:48:13 PM

[flagged]

by latentframe

3/30/2026 at 4:05:26 PM

Dead internet theory really is in overdrive, huh.

by SpicyLemonZest

3/30/2026 at 5:07:15 PM

It truly is.

Nowadays, the Dead internet theory isn't even trying to hide it, its so blatant nowadays.

by Imustaskforhelp

3/30/2026 at 4:29:55 PM

Take my downvote, clanker.

by senderista

3/30/2026 at 4:33:30 PM

Really not interesting analysis. Four "concentrated episodes" totaling 30 years, hardly "concentrated episodes", especially when you have a "concentrated episode" that lasts for fifteen years. It's extremely unsurprising there are periods of inflationary growth that's higher, and some lower.

by turtlesdown11