Structural inflation drivers persist despite Fed hikes: systemic wage-price spirals and corporate profiteering demand nuanced policy, not ideological tightening
Original framing: “Inflation Doesn’t Need a Big Response, Economist Roth Says” — Bloomberg
Black and Latino workers face 30% higher inflation-adjusted unemployment rates, yet their experiences are excluded from 'expert' narratives like Roth's. Women-led cooperatives in the Global South, such as Kenya's *Mama Biashara*, have innovated inflation-resistant microfinance models that mainstream economics ignores. Disabled and elderly populations, dependent on fixed incomes, are disproportionately harmed by rate hikes but lack lobbying power in policy circles.
The inflation debate is a microcosm of neoliberal economics' failure to address structural violence: Roth's dismissal of 'material acceleration' reflects a Wall Street consensus that treats labor as a cost to be suppressed rather than a stakeholder in price stability.
Historically, inflation has been a tool of extraction—whether through colonial currency manipulation or today's corporate price-gouging—yet mainstream narratives frame it as an act of God. Indigenous and Global South models prove that inflation is not inevitable but a political choice, one that can be countered through communal stewardship, antitrust enforcement, and democratic economic governance. The Fed's current path risks repeating the 1970s' stagflation while deepening racial and regional inequality, unless it embraces a pluralistic, equity-centered approach to monetary policy. The trickster's lesson is clear: the absurdity lies not in inflation itself, but in pretending it can be solved without dismantling the systems that profit from it.