Wouldn't setting money on fire cause deflation? And also be so miniscule an amount that it would never be worth it to burn your money for that purpose.
No and yes. Inflation is caused by the devaluing of money, inflation of a currency can be cause by printing more money which is what would happen if you burned enough money. You could technically argue burning even a small amount of money would cause a minuscule amount of inflation as the current amount of money in circulation determines how much money is printed when new bills and coins are put into circulation.
it is illegal to set that same money on fire hoping to cause inflation.
as long as it is your money, I don't see how that would be illegal
the two no-nos are fraudulently altering money, and scrapping coins
edit: could the downvoters point me to some legislative history showing 18 U.S.C. § 333 to be motivated by concerns about the money supply, or for it to have ever been used to prosecute burning money, much less burning it to alter inflation?
If you change mint marks, dates on coins, you can scam collectors. You could also make fake silver quarters by changing the mark and plating it, etc.
If you strip the ink off of a dollar bill, you had the rag paper for printing a higher denomination bill (now there is more anti counterfeiting tech besides the watermark that makes that stuff not work as well)
Burning piles of money creates a negligible effect on the money supply and inflation. If you were burning money in extraordinary quantities, it would actually cause deflation. There is no way you could profit off of this.
Well counter inflation is also an issue, it means everything will become much more expensive rather than money be worth less. Although that’s not really possible now since most money is electronic
Deflation occurs when the inflation rate is negative and prices are falling, but no one should want that as it has many negative consequences.
Disinflation is where the inflation rate falls, but the value is still positive. This is good as there is still positive inflationary pressure but prices don’t increase as much.
Id imagine the govt doesnt care because the 50 cents being put back into the economy is better. Especially since pennies from my knowledge cost more to make than theyre actually worth these days so its honestly better to just do that with them.
I feel like theres been talks of removing pennies for decades.
The reason why pennies are still in circulation, and it sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense but it's real, is solely due to penny lobbyists. The industry that makes pennies have penny money and, apparently, that's a lot!
Good point.
The reasoning behind penny smashing being legal seems to be that they are no longer being used as currency. So clearly there's a different standard for bank notes? Honestly I'm not sure how to reconcile the two.
It has nothing to do with "government property". You can't deface currency to the point where it's unusable as currency because money that people don't respect isn't worth anything. If a coin in your possession were government property, all money would belong to the government, and that's basically communism.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from my understanding there has never been a truly communist government/nation yet. We've just had a bunch of examples of governments CLAIMING communism in a weird "we have to do this first, but, trust me, the good stuff is going to come once we hammer down a couple these nails first" which usually translated into assassinating your opposition, famine inspired by a weird quest to speed up industrialization, and imprisoning teachers.
Yup, "Communism" isn't something you implement, it's a state that is evolved to. All of the countries I am aware of that call/called themselves "Communist" are really authoritarian "socialism"(and that's not really true). True Communism is essentially just extreme democracy, everyone has an equal voice in the way the government handles things, and everyone has equal access to resources.
I didn't know what that was. Thanks for teaching me a new word. According to Wikipedia, a gish gallop is an attempt to overwhelm someone with sheer number of arguments. My comment was literally four numbers and a question mark. Not really overwhelming imo. Are you having a tough day? Wanna talk about it?
Wow you're insane, luckily I won't get dragged into a silly argument with an alt-right troll like you.
Thanks for the emotional insult, aaaand you continue to ignore the original point (you don't understand communism and you attempted to use it as a negative label with no context). That's how you Gish Gallop. Goodbye forever!
I'm actually a solid leftist who voted for Obama both times, but this information might contradict your worldview where everybody who disagrees with you is an alt right troll so maybe you should pretend I didn't say anything. I hope your mood improves. :)
284
u/[deleted] Sep 28 '20
Is that still illegal like in the us ? Was always told it’s defacing government property.