by John Tamny
Forbes
Inflation is not rising prices. Deflation is not falling prices.
The more production expands across a rising number of hands and machines, the lower the price. And vice versa. The Apple iPhone is an effect of production on six different continents. Boeing jets are an effect of millions of different parts around the world. Global cooperation makes both increasingly affordable, not “monetary policy.”
Which is a reminder yet again that relentlessly falling prices are evidence of increasingly sophisticated and tessellated global production, not deflation. By contrast, evisceration of global cooperation during the coronavirus lockdowns logically resulted in higher prices borne of less sophisticated and less tessellated global production that, contra accepted wisdom, had little to do with inflation.