I’ve never heard of its doing so. That was approximately half of my point (#1 in the above). If you think I was suggesting it’s a thing anyone should be worrying about, then I respectfully advise you to read what I wrote again. If you merely think I should have been more forceful about how unlikely such an event is, you may be right.
that you don’t want to measure your wealth in money. What do you want to measure it in?
Ability to procure things I value. If my bank account stays exactly as it is and prices of food and books and computers and other things I spend money on halves, then the portion of my wealth embodied in my bank account has effectively doubled. If the prices of those other things double instead, then the portion of my wealth embodied in my bank account has effectively halved.
Of course in practice different things’ prices change in different ways. And in practice the relationship between money and those other things I care about stays pretty stable, which is one reason why Thomas’s analysis is highly misleading. And in practice I care about future prices at least as much as about present prices (but present prices are pretty much our best estimates of future prices, at least for well traded assets). So measuring wealth in money works very well in principle. But Thomas was (in effect) envisaging a weird situation in which the value of money relative to everything else increases abruptly, and although it’s very unlikely ever to happen it seemed worth pointing out some actual likely consequences.
[EDITED to add: This is currently at −1. I honestly have no idea why that might be. Anyone—preferably whoever actually downvoted me—want to explain?]
I’ve never heard of its doing so. That was approximately half of my point (#1 in the above). If you think I was suggesting it’s a thing anyone should be worrying about, then I respectfully advise you to read what I wrote again. If you merely think I should have been more forceful about how unlikely such an event is, you may be right.
Ability to procure things I value. If my bank account stays exactly as it is and prices of food and books and computers and other things I spend money on halves, then the portion of my wealth embodied in my bank account has effectively doubled. If the prices of those other things double instead, then the portion of my wealth embodied in my bank account has effectively halved.
Of course in practice different things’ prices change in different ways. And in practice the relationship between money and those other things I care about stays pretty stable, which is one reason why Thomas’s analysis is highly misleading. And in practice I care about future prices at least as much as about present prices (but present prices are pretty much our best estimates of future prices, at least for well traded assets). So measuring wealth in money works very well in principle. But Thomas was (in effect) envisaging a weird situation in which the value of money relative to everything else increases abruptly, and although it’s very unlikely ever to happen it seemed worth pointing out some actual likely consequences.
[EDITED to add: This is currently at −1. I honestly have no idea why that might be. Anyone—preferably whoever actually downvoted me—want to explain?]