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Welcome to the dig a podcast from Jacobin magazine

My name is Daniel Denver and I'm broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island

Republicans and out-of-style economists warn that the Biden administration is leading the economy and to run away inflation

The Biden administration in federal reserve by contrast point to the major disruptions caused by the pandemic

arguing that the inflation we've seen is caused by sector-specific supply chain bottlenecks

My guest today is historian Tim Barker. According to Barker, both sides of this debate share the same and rarely examined premises

And those premises are staunchly anti-worker

The first premise is how to interpret inflation

They're shared conventional wisdom being that problematic inflation is typically caused by worker wages

Rising too much which thus forces businesses to raise prices

The second premise is how to deal with inflation

Their conventional wisdom being that problematic inflation can only be solved by tightening the money supply

To push unemployment up and wages down

...