> I.e. people who need to work, which means it disproportionately affects the young.

In general currency devaluation causes nominal wages to increase along with the price of everything else.

The people who get screwed are creditors, especially creditors who issued debt at a fixed interest rate. Which is kind of not that bad, except that creditors tend to have a lot of political power and then use it to either get bailed out by the taxpayer or get policies put in place to prevent inflation from eroding existing debts even if those policies have harsh consequences for other people.

Indeed, demographics are destiny.

https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa99ccdbe...

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-42657-6

The relative rate of change is important, not the absolute change.

Politically, asset prices will be inflated quicker than labor prices. You can use SP500 as an easy guage.

This is not sustainable forever, of course, but I would bet there are a few more decades it will work.

Over the last 40 years the S&P has consistently increased around 7% a year more than wages regardless of “money printing” or interest rates

It’s not regardless of government intervention. There have been numerous bailouts and interest rates deductions specifically to backstop SP500.

It is a stealth tax that targets the young (or those too poor to be beneficiaries), because leaders need to maintain purchasing power for their voters’ benefits (the vast majority going to the old) and the solvency of taxpayer funded defined benefit pensions.