【正确答案】
1、The impact of inflation on wealth and income seems more obvious than that on output because of the uncertainty of inflation to large extent. Among different parties some people gain and some lose as shown in the following analysis:
(1) Creditors
Creditors are stripped of part of their wealth which is transferred to debtors during inflation period or to put in another way creditors lose part of their purchasing power. It's the same when people deposit their money at banks or invest in securities if returns or earnings are fixed under the condition of inflation. Inflation does erode people's income. For example, you deposit $100 at a bank with yearly interest rate of 10%. If price level rises by 15% one year later, you will lose purchasing power by about 5 % though you get $ 110 after one year.
(2) Debtors
Debtors can benefit from inflation while creditors with fixed income lost. Governments are inclined to issue too much money, in some economists' view, because of the effect of wealth redistribution. Usually governments are the largest debtors and issue a huge amount of public debts. Their burden of repaying principal and interest will become lighter when price level rises. So is the case with banks and their customers.
(3) Taxpayers
Inflation reduces people's real income. For example, the return rate of an investment before tax is 20%, if income tax rate is 30%, the nominal return rate before tax is 14% and the real income is only 3% if inflation is 11%. Under progressive income tax system, the growth of nominal income raises taxpayers' marginal tax rate. The increase of tax payable exceeds the rise of nominal income, so the real income will decrease, from which national governments can benefit a lot.
(4) Money-holders
Cash and checking account deposits without interest won't bring the holders any earnings and the purchasing power of them will decrease with the rise of inflation rates. So economists call this distorted effect of "inflation tax".
【答案解析】