曼昆版宏观经济学ch4_货币与通货膨胀..ppt

* * In the 1970s, the income tax was not adjusted for inflation. There were a lot of people who received nominal salary increases large enough to push them into a higher tax bracket, but not large enough to prevent their real salaries from falling in the face of high inflation. This led to political pressure to index the income tax brackets. If inflation had been higher during 1995-2000, when lots of people were earning high capital gains, then there might have been more political pressure to index the capital gains tax. * Examples: Parents trying to decide how much to save for the future college expenses of their (now) young child. Thirty-somethings trying to decide how much to save for retirement. The CEO of a big corporation trying to decide whether to build a new factory, which will yield a revenue stream for 20 years or more. Your grandmother claiming that things were so much cheaper when she was your age. A silly digression: My grandmother often has these conversations with me, concluding that the dollar just isn’t worth what it was when she was young. I ask her “well, how much is a dollar worth today?”. She considers the question, and then offers her estimate: “About 60 cents.” I then offer her 60 cents for every dollar she has. She doesn’t accept the offer. :) * Ask students this rhetorical question: Would it upset you off if somebody arbitrarily took wealth away from some people and gave it to others? Well, this in effect is what’s happening when inflation turns out different than expected. Furthermore, it’s impossible to predict when inflation will turn out higher than expected, when it will be lower, and how big the difference will be. So, these redistributions of purchasing power are arbitrary and random. The text gives a nice example on p.99 (at the top of the page). (In the short run, when many nominal wages are fixed by contracts, there are transfers of purchasing power between firms and their employees whenever inflat