Abstract
The most general meaning of inflation is ‘expansion’. Originally applied particularly to the money supply, inflation came to mean not the expansion of the money supply itself, but rather its supposed effect-a rise in the price level. Now the opposite pattern is occurring, and the term ‘wage inflation’ is continually being used in the press with the deliberate intention of suggesting not just that wages are rising, but also that trade unions are to blame for price increases. Such use of words is clearly a barrier to understanding what inflation — in its commonly accepted meaning of a rise in prices — really represents.
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References
See M. Friedman, Monetary Correction (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1974).
J. Tobin,‘Unemployment and Inflation’, American Economic Review (Mar 1972) p. 5.
See, for example, A. J. Glyn and R. B. Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972) pp. 89–93.
See R. J. Ball and Peter Doyle (eds), Inflation (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) ch. 15.
See M. Friedman and D. Laidler, Unemployment versus Inflation (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1975).
See especially, E. H. Phelps-Brown,‘A Non-Monetarist View of the Pay Explosion’, Three Banks Review (Mar 1975).
Dudley Jackson, H. A. Turner and Frank Wilkinson, Do Trade Unions Cause Inflation? (Cambridge University Press, 1972).
P. Wiles,‘Cost Inflation and the State of Economic Theory’, Economic Journal (June 1973) pp. 375 ff.
J. E. Meade, Wages and Prices in a Mixed Economy (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1971) p. 21.
F. A. Hayek, Full Employment at any Price (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1974). p. 23.
See Glyn and Sutcliffe, British Capitalism: David Yaffe,‘The Crisis and Profitability’, New Left Review (July–Aug 1973);
P. Devine,‘Inflation and Marxist Theory’, Marxism Today (Mar 1974);
and Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1975) esp. ch. 13.
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© 1977 Sam Aaronovitch, Bettina Berch, Monika Beutel, Ben Fine, Andrew Glyn, Francis Green, Laurence Harris, Sue Himmelweit, Rhys Jenkins, Simon Mohun, Petter Nore, Bob Sutcliffe
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Glyn, A. (1977). Inflation. In: Green, F., Nore, P. (eds) Economics: An Anti-Text. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15751-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15751-8_10
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