“A government can give all the people something for nothing by simply printing more money.  This doesn’t work, because it makes all the money worth less, as it did in Weimer Germany, Carter America, and Yeltsin Russia.  Inflation is a tax on the prudent, who watch the value of their conservative savings-bond and bank-account investments disappear. It’s a subsidy for the “big swinging dicks” who can borrow money for harebrained speculatory schemes and pay it back later with cheap cash. And it’s a punishment to the old and the poor, who live on fixed incomes and who can’t expect to get a big cost-of-living adjustment retrieving soda cans from trash baskets.  ”

From Eat the Rich by P.J. O’Rourke

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