Today inflation is rampant. The cost of living in many countries is close to or above 10 %.
Many people perceive this as a bad sign.
Why inflation is not unfair for poor people
Inflation leads to a devaluation of the borrows’ debt. At the same time, it reduces the value of the credit or real money in your possession.
This shift means wealthy people get poorer. People living in a lot of debt get richer.
Poor people usually live on their salary alone. In an ideal world, wages would be affected by inflation.
Everybody wants more money, and people would stop working if exploited there.
Currently, this adaptation happens in many areas of the economy, like the healthcare and the restaurant industry. The salaries are too low for the work. There are more attractive jobs elsewhere.
People working on sub-living wage is only possible in a feudalistic society relying on servitude and slavery. Many people will stop working, as basic social security is often a better option, even in the USA.
Thus, wages will catch up in the long run, or businesses will go out of business.
When price increases are unfair
Catastrophic events like war, corona, or natural disasters can increase prices due to supply shortages.
Today, many businesses have handed down these increases to their customers. For business to business, the cost increases are often handed further to the next customer.
Workers usually cannot increase their price, that is, their salary directly. Instead, collective negotiations or finding a new job takes place. Small businesses currently have the same issues. If they increased their prices, their customers would stop coming.
The ability to increase the price relies on its own market power, also known as pricing power. To determine if you have pricing power, ask yourself, “Can you increase the price of whatever you sell”?
People without pricing power see the exploitation of market power as unfair. They lose in the inflation game. Somebody else is making a huge gain, which is their loss.
If this did not happen, everybody would be in the same position after a complete cycle of increases. Only the rich and unproductive people would lose.