And I know people who were given a free world-class education, even though their parents were illiterate peasants in the Russian Empire. Nobody argues that USSR was a 100% nice free democratic country.

Ok. Then the burden is still on you to explain why inflation is bad. Why is expansion of fiat currency supply without corresponding price increases is bad?

So to sum it up - you don't have a working model that can correctly predict the result of 3x expansion of the monetary supply. So you simply start raving, repeating discredited cliches. For example, Weimar Republic fell after 2 years of _deflation_. USSR had no inflation until it decided to allow free market.

And 100 years of currency destruction got us from muddy roads filled with horse dung to modern cities, airplanes and computers. I call that a win.

Duh. 1991 was the start of the collapse, try checking 1988 for a better comparison. And no, "running of other peoples' money" was not the reason. It's a catchy phrase, but it's stupid beyond belief.

If you are really interested, then you should know that there were two independent currencies in the USSR. The major one was the 'cashless ruble' which was used only in transactions between state-owned companies and the minor one was regular cash money (only used to pay salaries). These two systems had been pretty much independent with negligible flows between them until 1985 when limited private companies (cooperatives) were allowed. Cooperatives had ability to get cashless money and convert it into hard currency (that process was called 'obnalichka' at the time) - that was the proximate cause of economy collapse.

Then we should talk about why cooperatives were even allowed to operate and about structural problems in the USSR economy. But it's much more complicated than "running out of peoples' money".

ANYONE could get a place to live, even anti-Soviet dissidents. Of course, if you had connections to the right people then you could get a much nicer place. There were no rent payment you're probably confusing them with payments for utilities.

As for the availability, the USSR grew quickly from a very poor country with most of population living in squalor to a moderately wealthy one. Whole cities were built from scratch to provide better living conditions, and such advances were not uniformly distributed geographically.

I'm NOT saying that the USSR was a paradise or even a nice place to live. But it was not a totally bad commie hell with doom and gloom everywhere.

Yes, and there was an amazing level of gender equality only recently surpassed by the Western world. And a lot of other cool stuff.

But of course, there were some downsides. Like lack of the freedom of speech, or pervasive spying. Oh wait...

Sure. We can call increase in the monetary supply (fiat or any other type) a 'cheesecake', 'gazonk', 'blurb' or anything else. It's just not 'inflation' unless there's a corresponding increase in general prices for all goods.

Nope. Expanding a fiat currency supply is not bad. And history is my witness.

Feel free to create a model that correctly predicts the result of 3x increase in the monetary supply. What's going to happen and why? Does it happen in all cases?

Bread was not free, though it was very cheap. And it was always available, even during the worst days of 1992 (when the country was breaking apart).

The line on the picture is not a bread line, it's a line before a meat shop. Also, it might seem silly, but the per-capita meat consumption of USSR in 1988 had been reached by Russia only in 2008.

It gets even better. All citizens of the USSR were guaranteed a certain amount of personal living space by law. And it was even free, you simply got the keys to your apartment from your nearest friendly Communist Party office.

Oh, medical care was also free.

Nope. You're talking about gazonk. Inflation is _defined_ as "a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services " in the Mariam-Webster dictionary. Simple increase in monetary supply doesn't mean anything.

If you're arguing that increased money supply is ALWAYS bad, then the burden is on you to create a model that demonstrates this. And then to validate the model by making predictions about the past and future events.

And? Feel free to invent your own term ('gazonk' sounds nice), build a theory that makes useful predictions around it and then explain to us why gazonk is so bad.

Right now you _dishonestly_ try to exploit a fear of inflation by redefining it to your liking.

Maybe you should reach into the early days of the Roman Empire for a definition? According to YOUR definition - inflation is good and we ALWAYS should have A LOT MORE of it.

According to MY definition (which is a generally accepted one) we right now have inflation that is lower than an optimal target. But larger inflation (which may happen in future) is also bad.

No. Deflation is defined in a dictionary as a "general decrease in market prices". Inflation is defined as "general increase in market prices". So far there's been no significant inflation since the start of the crisis (no significant deflation in the US either).

Feel free to call your monetary phenomena something else, and then explain why they are good or bad.

You know, you are an idiot, right? I clicked one of your links at random:

Wow, we have deflation!!!111ONEONEONE. Hmm, maybe another link?

Whole 5% other 3 years, that's like 1.5% of inflation each year! The sky is falling!

If you actually could follow a logical argument, you'd have checked http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/ - it tracks the actual prices. So far their numbers are in agreement with the official stats. But no, libertards prefer to live in imaginary worlds, they are too scared to actually admit that their mythology of tax cuts as a universal treatment is wrong.