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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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If this explanation is correct, it might mean the government stimulus is part of the saved up money that Americans are now spending, but I somehow doubt that one time payments of $600 per person in December of 2020, and $1000-$3000 in 2021 are the best explanation for a sustained increase of prices across the economy. That just doesn't seem like a parsimonious explanation of what we're observing.

This spending was financed by government debt. Debt that that wasn't paid off. In a standard Keynesian model a sustained increase in the level of government debt leads to a sustained increase in the price level all things equal. Monetary factors also matter a lot, but the Fed was also being expansionary and allowed inflation to increase rapidly and didn't want to tighten policy and cause deflation, since that would lead to a recession in the standard Keynesian model.