A Left Answer to Inflation with Hadas Thier

Upstream

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.9 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2022

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Far from being some kind of transcendent economic phenomenon originating from higher realms of monetary physics that are indecipherable to us mere proletarian mortals, the economy is actually pretty straightforward and easy to understand — it's mostly just politics. And that's still true when it comes to purposefully mystified topics like inflation — particularly to how policymakers respond to inflation — it's all just politics. Decisions made by those in power.

But the thing is right now the decisions about how to respond to inflation are being made by a class of people whose job it is, under capitalism, to make sure that the economy works for just one small group of people: capitalists. There is, of course, an alternative — and that alternative is one that would look a lot better for the vast majority of us.

In this Conversation we take a deep dive into inflation: what it is, what's driving it, what's wrong with the current response to it, and what a left response to inflation would look like.

Hadas Thier is a writer, journalist, and activist based in Brooklyn, New York. We had her on the show earlier this year to talk about her book, A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics, and for this Conversation we'll be talking about her latest article for In These Times, titled "A Left Answer to Inflation."

Thank you to The Limeliters for the intermission music and to Bethan Mure for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

Related Conversations / Further listening: Inflation with Richard Wolff and Dean Baker (In Conversation)

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Transcript

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1:06.0	One of the things about certainly economics in general and also inflation in particular
1:24.4	is that it's both purposefully mystified, which is why I think it's important to talk about in a
1:29.2	way that regular people can understand. But it's also deep politicized. And what I mean by
1:36.0	deep politicized is that when people talk about the economy, it's like the economy quote-unquote is
1:41.2	like its own force that just exists in some kind of technical world and we need to respond to it
1:49.8	with all these technical fixes, you know, the interest rates, other kinds of things that the federal
1:56.7	reserve can do and so on. And it's just what it does is it functions to sanitize what are overtly
2:04.4	political decisions. Decisions that in many cases and certainly on the case with inflation are class
2:12.0	war positions. You are listening to upstream upstream upstream upstream a podcast of documentaries and
2:20.1	conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics.
2:25.4	I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Dela Duncan. Far from being some kind of transcendent economic
2:31.6	phenomenon originating from higher realms of monetary physics that are indecipherable to us mere
	...

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