Inflation

Inflation: a persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a consistent decline in the purchasing power of money, caused by an increase in available currency and credit beyond the proportion of available goods and services.

I typed "Inflation made easy" into Google. I don't think there is a way to make it easy. I couldn't find a website that clearly stated what Canada's inflation rate was/is. One said 1.6% and another said 2.9%. I genuinely don't know what that means. Is that good? Is it bad? We are not a poor country. I think infact, we are a decidedly rich and wasteful nation in some ways. But I still don't understand inflation. I guess an inflation rate under... what? like 25% may not be all bad...

I read the cause of inflation is an excess of money. This means more people will spend that extra money, and some retailers will be forced to raise their prices to compensate for product now flying off the shelf. If they don't, the manufacturer needs to create more product to meet demand and that means hiring more workers who will make more money and the cycle continues. This is obviously a horribly easy definition, but it helps.

Sort of...

My reasoning for this sudden need to understand inflation does not come from my unquenchable desire to learn despite the arrival of reading week rather from reading a story about Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is between Southern Africa and Zambia. It is slightly larger than the state of Montana and has a population of 12,776,990. The median age for men is 19.28 years and for females it is 19.24. Most of us would be dead by now. Only 3.6% of the population lives past the age of 65. Between 1998 and 2002 Zimbabwe became involved in the war in the Congo. During that time inflation rose from 32% in 1998 to 246.7% in 2005. The article I read stated that percentage is now at 613%. In 1998 one US dollar was 24 Zimbabwe dollars. In 2005 it was 15,200. I wonder what it would be worth now.