Don’t fall for the right’s disingenuous fears about inflation Mark Blyth

Thirty years ago, Albert O Hirschman infuriated conservatives by showing how their arguments fall into three rhetorical buckets: perversity – raising taxes means less revenue; futility – voting changes nothing; and jeopardy – if you give the vote to poor people, you get revolution. This still sheds light on the conservative obsession with inflation.

Whenever inflation threatens, two types of perversity thesis are deployed. The first, from investors, argues that inflation hits those on fixed