Welcome to money for the rest of us. This is a personal finance show on money, how it works, how to invest it, and how to live without worrying about it.

I'm your host David Stein. today is episode 475.

It's titled Inflation's Illusion, De debunking the Normalcy of Currency Debasement.

Last week the Financial Times published in their Big Read section, a lengthy article by

Kana Inagaki and Leo Lewis titled, Is Japan Finally Becoming a a normal economy.

They wrote, now Japan Central Bankers and government officials say the country is at a historic

inflection point and may finally become a normal economy.

Companies will be able to pass on increased costs to consumers in the form of higher prices

and workers will respond by demanding better pay.

They're suggesting and have some other quotes from the article from government and

central bank officials that normal is having inflation, rising prices, which means

the value of the currency isn't going as far, it's being debased.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said we have obtained a once-in-a-lifetime

historic opportunity to exit from deflation, deflation being falling prices.

We are going to make sure that a positive mindset that will see rising wages

as the norm will be firmly established across the entire society.

That suggests,

deflation is bad, an inflationary mindset, expecting inflation,

wanting inflation, wanting prices to go up so that we can demand higher wages, that's a good thing.

Let's see if that's the case in this episode.

Prices in Japan started rising in the spring of 2022 after the COVID pandemic

in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

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