Comment by curiousllama
3 hours ago
Yea, that's his point. The gold standard neither prevents nor encourages inequality, except inasmuch as it limits policy flexibility (which, similarly, could be used to promote or limit inequality).
3 hours ago
Yea, that's his point. The gold standard neither prevents nor encourages inequality, except inasmuch as it limits policy flexibility (which, similarly, could be used to promote or limit inequality).
The gold standard mechanistically is a driver of wealth inequality, due to its deflationary effects and lack of a governmental mechanism to create more of it. It is not the only driver of wealth inequality, but when we used it that is what it did.
Policy flexibility is the only one of those that’s in theory responsive to democratic governance. Your opinion of whether that’s a good thing or not depends somewhat on which side of the inequality you’re on, I think.