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Technical Deflation

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In economics, deflation is the opposite of inflation—it's what we call it when prices go down instead of up. It is generally considered harmful: both because it is usually brought on by something really bad (like a severe economic contraction), and because in and of itself, it has knock-on effects on consumer behavior that can lead to a death spiral. One of the main problems is that if people expect prices to keep going down, they'll delay purchases and save more, because they expect that they'll be able to get the stuff for less later. Less spending means less demand means less revenue means fewer jobs which means less spending and then whoops you're in a deflationary spiral. This is why we like to run the economy at 2% annual inflation—it's low enough to avoid the bad parts of inflation, but it encourages spending and leaves a nice healthy cushion between you and the deflation trap. (This is also kind of a huge problem for the White House, because everyone who's mad about inflation w

--> Technical Deflation Technical Deflation Let's buy the fridge next month, honey. Posted Nov 23, 2025 by Benjamin Anderson In economics, deflation is the opposite of inflation—it's what we call it when prices go down instead of up. It is generally considered harmful: both because it is usually brought on by something really bad (like a severe economic contraction), and because in and of itself, it has knock-on effects on consumer behavior that can lead to a death spiral. One of the main problems is that if people expect prices to keep going down, they'll delay purchases and save more, becaus

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