Inflation Does More Than Raise Prices. It Destroys Governments.
About this episode
Economic historian Brad DeLong argues that inflation does more than raise prices — it destroys governments and the social orders that sustain them. He explains inflation not as a money-supply phenomenon but as a mismatch between spending flows and production flows, then traces how 1970s inflation shattered the social-democratic order: wage and price controls under Nixon, the OPEC shock, and Paul Volcker's harsh disinflation rewrote the moral narrative of economic policy and ushered in the neoliberal era. He is skeptical of today's 1970s analogies, seeing the current bout as closer to the postwar demobilization inflation of 1947. The conversation also ranges over China's middle-income trap, the info-biotech economy, and the cooperative 'gift-exchange' sector he sees as a source of hope.