I remember reading over the years, various places, but enough so that I came to believe it, that inflation couldn’t really get going until there was wage inflation, and globalization, robotics, offshoring etc., all made it nearly impossible for there to be much wage inflation. Now, however, after bailing out the banks in ’08/09, this time around the government had to bailout the people, direct payments and generous unemployment benefits. And now we know the truth. First of all, the government can be very generous when it is printing and giving away money, so we have pretty good idea that the bank bailout was probably pretty generous. Second, we’ve learned that when the government gives money directly to the people, as opposed to banksters, it is actually very stimulative to the economy. But third and perhaps most important, people no longer want to work for crap wages and with generous unemployment benefits they have no incentive to take crap jobs, and so they aren’t. It will be interesting to see what breaks first, but if employers have to give in a significantly raise wages, i wonder if that will finally start the inflation ball rolling?