We need a new carpet...

There was this idea in some Scandinavian country some years ago that fines, rather than being imposed in monetary terms, should be expressed in hours worked - so if you were fined 20 hours pay say, then the more you earned, the more you would end up paying.  And that got me thinking about inflation.  Inflation is a bad thing, right? Well no actually.  Why do you buy stuff?  Well firstly, because you want it, but also because you know if you don't buy it now, by the time you do get round to buying it, it will almost certainly cost you more.  That's inflation.  So if there were no inflation, there would be no real incentive to buy now.  Even worse, deflation - every incentive to delay buying, on the basis that the price will come down.  But this of course takes no account of your pay - which is where we come back to the Scandinavian idea.  Real inflation is the rate at which prices are rising related to the rate at which your pay is going up.  In other words the real price of that TV set or that three-piece suite is not the pounds-and-pence price tag so much as how many hours do you have to work to pay for it. And if your pay is going up faster than the price is rising than why buy it now?  So the economy needs inflation - but not too much.  All very complicated,isn't it?