Inflation is getting under people’s skin these days. Prices are rising month after month, you notice it in the energy prices, but now also in the supermarket. But anyone – like eXXpress columnist Andreas Tögel – who was born in 1957 can still remember very different times when an ice cream cost one shilling and 50 groschen – which would correspond to the equivalent of 11 cents.
Tögel emphasizes that the price increase is not a new phenomenon. Long before delivery bottlenecks in the Corona era or the war in Ukraine, it shaped everyday life. That’s what his new book is about.
In his book “Inflation – Why life is always more expensive” (published by Frank & Frei), Tögel focuses on the actual cause of inflation, as he emphasizes, and that is the expansion of the money supply. But the central bank and politicians hardly ever speak to her.
“You have to see inflation in a larger context,” emphasizes Tögel in an interview on eXXpressTV. “Inflation is not a phenomenon these days. Currency devaluation is a phenomenon of the past decades.” The Corona crisis and the Ukraine war only served as an excuse for politicians. “One must not lose sight of the central driver of the erosion of the value of money: the expansion of the money supply”.
For decades, the number of monetary units has increased faster than supply. There is no direct connection between the money supply and the price of goods, partly because of the growing productivity of industry, but the consequences are very concrete.
“My father was a watchmaker,” recalls the eXXpress columnist. “He was still able to buy a condominium and a house in the countryside as the sole breadwinner. Today, young people have to get heavily into debt for decades and possibly have to do without children. A lot has changed there.”
Tögel’s book is an introductory book for economic laypeople and a polemic in one. On the one hand, the Viennese businessman wants to draw attention to connections that usually remain hidden from the public. In addition, he does not allow politicians and the central bank to get away with the common excuses that see the reason for the current sharp rise in prices exclusively in external events, such as blocked supply chains – and not in the ultra-loose monetary policy, to which the European Central Bank is currently undeterred.
The book is entertaining and informative reading!
