Citizens of Zimbabwe : Good luck you're screwed

This is part of the problem as a whole. As seen in the past when shit gets out of hand people rebel, protest and strike, the government of Zimbabwe is threatened. Westernized states have figured it out, you don't steal a person's cow, that's to obvious, you take 10% of the milk the cow produces, 10% of their eggs from the chickens, 10% of the grain they produce ect, add it all up and its just as good as getting the whole cow without the immediate angry reaction that threatens your position. Sure inflation is only at 3% annually, and maybe the post office runs a couple of billion $ loss per year (whats that $10 a person?), and we pay a few pennies more on gas and cigareetes, and health insurance prices are higher than they ought to be, and we build hundred million dollar stadiums for billionaires to use, and we don't have any idea how much SS money we are going to get when we retire (do i need to keep going?). The western governments are acting just like the worm in office space, take a penny here and there, but take it enough times until your fat and rich off the work of others.
Inflation is even more insidious because it seems like a service.
Adios


Inflation is easier to control, and thats part of the problem, you are enabling the monopoly further by granting the government the ability to control aspects of pricing. If deflation would occur the government's ineptitude at bargaining for resources would show much sooner as the prices they pay for materials (to build roads, deliver mail ect) would continually grow while prices in all other sectors would decrease. Both incompetence and corruption would soon be exposed, inflation is a tool in which they can confiscate money without using direct taxation and force all sectors to charge higher prices which hides their unwillingness/inability to correctly bargain for resources. Its win win, unless of course your not in the loop.


Wages are harder (not impossible) to renegotiate downward which gives the employee a stronger position relative to the employer. On the other side wages are generally the last thing to rise in correlation with inflation which generally allows employers to stiff you on 1-2%. When your wages are tied to inflation you generally get the raise at the end of the year (or the beginning of the next one) but not retroactively, but inflation (the CPI) is measured in prices that have already increased meaning your purchasing power is down the inflation percentage for that year. Your raise is just a correction for the previous year but you will still lose out to that current years inflation rates. Again, inflation is good for employers, bad for employees.

When something is easy to control you end up with a small group exercising power over the larger population which enables them to manipulate the market in ways which are preferable for them, and highly likely not preferable for you (the citizen, the consumer). This is the problem with monopolies, and government institutions are not exempt from such "corruption".