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AskProfWolff: Why do Prices Rise in Capitalism?

A patron of Economic Update asks: "My friend and I have backgrounds in economics -- in fact I took economics back in the late 1980's at the time of Reagan, and I have taken it again recently. What shocked me was that they were teaching the same monetary theory today in the age of infinite creation of the medium of exchange through printing and through credit -- where the size of the money supply is no longer under anything resembling central bank control. No one I have ever met has been able to explain to me why, in light of what I know about economies of scale reducing unit costs and leading to efficiency and the burst of industrial technology in our age -- why do prices of consumer goods continue to increase while quality consistently decreases? Is this just because people have lost hope that things could be any other way? Why do I hear of deflation as a negative thing -- wouldn't this mean more disposable income for everyone, all things being equal?"


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Learn more about Prof Wolff's new book, The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself, that comes out mid-September: 
www.democracyatwork.info/books

"Richard Wolff in his new book examines frightening and anti-democratic configurations of corporate power, offering not only a blueprint for how we got here, but a plan for how we will rescue ourselves and create new models of economic and political justice.” - Chris Hedges


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