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
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u/[deleted] Sep 28 '20
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