Inflation is a social power contest over bargaining power, not a purely monetary event

Evidence

Inflation is never just a monetary phenomenon – just as money is never just a token of exchange value. When, for whatever reason, prices surge across the board, a social power game is afoot in which everyone attempts to suss out their bargaining power. Business managers try to work out how far they can raise prices – if not to profit then, at least, to recoup their own rising costs. Rentiers, both traditional and cloudalist, test the water with rent hikes. Workers assess the extent to which they can push for a pay rise – at least to compensate for the higher bills they must meet. Governments play the game too: do they intervene by using the greater income and VAT tax receipts flowing from the rising prices to assist weaker citizens being crushed by inflation? Or do they subsidise Big Business as it is squeezed by high energy prices? Or do they do nothing much? Until these questions get answered, inflation continues to roll. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 526

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Reframes inflation as a distributed bargaining-power struggle in which workers, rentiers, managers and states each test their leverage — a paradigm-shifting alternative to monetarist explanations.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 526
• XREF: connects to: Mainstream economists openly endorse using unemployment to fight inflation — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 283; Neoliberal thinkers explicitly prioritized fighting inflation over reducing social friction. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 187; Neoliberals opposed welfare for inflation fear, not moral reasons — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 228 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Inflation is a political class-war flare-up rather than a monetary phenomenon #corroborates (0.95) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 539
• How inflation ends depends on which class holds power over the others #expands (0.90) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 527
• Twentieth-century inflation indexed labor’s power as a political actor. #exemplifies (0.80) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 242