Of course not, claiming that would be rediciulous. The last one, post Covid, seems to be driven partially by corporate profits if you believe people being much more knowledgable about those things than me.
> if you believe people being much more knowledgable about those things
My father was head of the business department at a college and taught finance. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of how money worked. He had a degree in economics from MIT and an MBA from Harvard and a PhD in history from KSU.
We had a lot of discussions about this.
But since he has passed on, you might be interested in "Monetary History of the United States" by Milton Friedman.
Lots of things, government deficit spending being only one of them. What % of causality can be assigned to deficit spending vs. other causes is something I will leave to the experts.
> My father
Knowledge of finance and history is great, but it's not a substitute for actually being an economist.
As for the "degree in economics", lots of people out there have an undergrad economics degree, including me. That doesn't make me an economist any more than my other undergrad degree (math) makes me a mathematician.
One thing that I'm sure you already know about history is that causality is not a constant thing over time. Something can cause inflation in the 1990s, and a completely different process can cause inflation in the 2020s.
I think we all agree that government deficit spending can cause inflation, and is one possible cause to be investigated among others. Is it the sole cause of all inflation in the last 40 years? Is that causality even possible to determine from the data? I suggest that nobody can be both intellectually honest and confident in answering those questions.
Unless you're willing to stake your own expertise against Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Reich, then I respectfully suggest you should back off from your confidence in what you personally believe is happening in the economy.
And yes, I would say the same to Stiglitz if he had a habit of complaining about the D compiler design in economics forums.
Yes, a degree in economics does make one an economist. So does teaching college level finance courses.
> I think we all agree that government deficit spending can cause inflation
If it is borrowed money that is then paid back, it does not cause inflation. If it is borrowed money that is financed by borrowing more money, it does (not "can") cause inflation.
> Is it the sole cause of all inflation in the last 40 years?
Nothing else explains the increase in the quantity of money relative to the value of goods & services in it.
> Unless you're willing to stake your own expertise against Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Reich
Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy. Remember all the appeals to authority with Fauci, who was upset that people would not accept his pronouncements as the truth, especially after he was found to be lying? Reich is either a fool or a liar. I don't know anything about Stiglitz. I've read enough of Krugman to know he's a fool.
> I would say the same to Stiglitz if he had a habit of complaining about the D compiler design in economics forums.
It's a poor analogy because I have a lifetime of personal experience with economics, I've run successful businesses, I manage investments for several people, and I've read economics texts by Nobel prize winning economists.
