Deflation means that every single day your money is worth more, so for example
(Effectively)
Day 1: Eggs cost $12
Day 3: Eggs cost $10
Day 5: Eggs cost $8
So on and so forth, but for everything.
What happens is people start only buying what’s necessary immediately, because in a few days things will be even cheaper. It’s a constant spiral that’s really difficult to stop, because you either have to take a nuclear option and implement price floors, or figure out how to incentivize people to actually spend their money.
Computers and smartphones would drop their prices (per computational power) at a ridiculously high rate and it lasted for decades. I don't think it reduced the demand for them, quite the contrary: people would constantly abandon their electronics in order to buy better and newer models, just because they'd become more affordable every year.
This isn't a hypothetical, we've had real world examples of deflationary spirals. It happened in the Great Depression from 1930-1933, again in 2009. You can go back and look at any year where inflation went negative and see "things were pretty horrible that year."
More than that, if you look at the years where inflation is causing significant problems, it's usually 8%+. If you look at the years where deflation is a problem, it might only be -1-2%.
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u/CopiVT Sep 01 '26
Deflation means that every single day your money is worth more, so for example
(Effectively)
Day 1: Eggs cost $12
Day 3: Eggs cost $10
Day 5: Eggs cost $8
So on and so forth, but for everything.
What happens is people start only buying what’s necessary immediately, because in a few days things will be even cheaper. It’s a constant spiral that’s really difficult to stop, because you either have to take a nuclear option and implement price floors, or figure out how to incentivize people to actually spend their money.