I do not really think that there is a better fundamental definition of inflation than the one I learned when studying Tudor history at A Level: Too much money chasing too few goods.
We now live in a globalised world, we are told, certainly much more globalised than that of Henry VIII – even though that world was globalising rapidly, relative to what it had been until 1492.
And so we have a globalised monetary system which is currently having a lot of money pumped into it to save the banks through the process euphemistically called Quantitative Easing. Global prices are rising, food prices are rising.
History is full of stories of poor people rioting when food gets hard to come by – so common did bread riots become in England during the 19th century that they got barely a mention in the national press unless they spilled over in to real mayhem; usually they just came into the category Not Many Dead.
Rioting is also a youthful pastime – England’s rapidly growing C19th population was also a youthful one.
Today we are much older & staider as a society.
But the Middle East is not, & that is where inflation is causing riots, as the focus of their discontent moves away from mere food towards the system that makes that hard to come by.
