The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. The discussion established that the term is both notable, and sufficiently distinct from Inflation to warrant a standalone article. Further improvement may be desireable, but is not a reason to delete. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 17:47, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Inflationism[edit]

Inflationism (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Appears to be content fork from main Inflation article. None of the references cited actually use the archaic word 'Inflationism'. If the historical term is notable enough for a standalone article, suggest a wipe to stub, with a rewrite based on the historical use of the term. Alternatively, if the current topic is considered notable, a rename may be appropriate. LK (talk) 13:54, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. — --Lambiam 19:12, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. I don't know enough about the topic to be able to judge if this is a notable concept, and if it is not, whether the content is worth being merged to some other place. I do see, though, that the (entirely unsourced) lead is confusing and, if taking literally, self-contradictory, and therefore unlikely to be representative of a definition of the subject as one might hope to find in reliable sources. First, if an inflationist economic policy is one that is predicted to lead to inflation, then surely an inflationist economist is an economist who advocates such a policy, which is not necessarily the same as advocating inflation; it all depends on whose prediction this is – of proponents of the policy, or of its opponents. Then, being told that "Mainstream economics advocates a low, stable level of inflation", the conclusion must be that (at least at a low level) mainstream economics is inflationist, but we are immediately informed that it is thus "largely opposed to inflationist policies".  --Lambiam 18:42, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Oops, sorry about that – the position of mainstream economics (low, stable level of inflation as necessary evil, but opposed to high or unstable inflation or to deflation) is a bit tricky to explain. I’ve tried to clarify this in this revision – hope it’s clearer! —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 12:52, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Addition. All sources I could find in a quick search that define this term define it as a monetary policy, something that (I think) is not the same as an economic policy. The term appears to have a certain notability, though, if only in discussing "archaic" views (in particular Ludwig von Mises).  --Lambiam 18:51, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete The article has few sources and provides no evidence that this is a generally used term. Therefore should be deleted per WP:NEOLOGISM as a POV fork. TFD (talk) 20:16, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  Well, if you do the Google books and scholar searches, you get thousands of hits, with dozens going back to the 19th century and most of the rest to the 20th century, so it is not really a neologism. Having a lack of sources is not by itself a ground for deletion.  --Lambiam 21:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak keep. The contents of the article aren't something I would ordinarily jump to defend: they are poorly sourced and appear to advance a non-neutral point of view. (This is the case of many of our economics articles, since our economics editors unfortunately seem to be generally at the fringes of mainstream contemporary economics.) However, based on thousands of relevant hits in Google scholar and Google books to high quality sources, the notion seems to me to be clearly notable enough to warrant a separate article. It is certainly not a neologism on the one hand, and a few recent hits (e.g., [1]) also suggest that the term isn't totally archaic either. This leaves the matter of whether this is a "POV fork". That is less clear to me. It seems that the term "inflationism" is used largely in a polemic context to demonize certain policies advocated by Keynsian economists. (This impression is just based on a very superficial gestalt of the sources google turned up, so caveat emptor.) This may make it a little more difficult to have a neutral article about the concept (since, to oversimplify, it is a straw man used by one side in a debate), but I think it is definitely possible to do so. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:37, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep or merge

  (I’m the original author of this article.)

  I started this article to provide some mainly historical summary of advocacy in favor of inflation, because inflation has been advocated in various historical instances – Free Silver, some Great Depression (notably debt deflation), and with the recent economic crisis – and “that policy will lead to inflation” is often used as a term of abuse.

  I wrote a separate article as per Wikipedia:Summary style to avoid bloating the main inflation article (which is already quite long). Further, positions actually advocating inflation (as opposed to being accused of such but rejecting it) are quite heterodox, so I thought it best to clearly separate it – no-one reading the main Inflation article should be misled into thinking that pro-inflation is a mainstream position, but conversely pro-inflation views should be addressed somewhere, and more coherently than occasional mentions at specific historical episodes.

  I didn’t mean to push a POV – I try to write sympathetically, presenting the arguments that people give, regardless of my personal views (e.g., when writing about Austrian economics or Marxist economics), so the article may well come across as pro-inflation itself, particularly the section “Contemporary advocacy” (I was just trying to report the arguments people made). Sorry about this, and please feel free to change it or to make suggestions or requests of me!

  As to the title “Inflationism”, this is a historical term (as noted above), and seemed the best title for the article (as opposed to “Historical pro-inflation views” or the like) – it’s etymologically neutral and has seen significant actual use.

  As to whether it is exclusively a monetary policy term, I’m no specialist, but my understanding is that it’s been used pretty generally, e.g. to attack the fiscal policies advocated by various underconsumptionist economists (you can think of these as Keynesian pre-history), though of course inflation and monetary policy/monetary theories are closely linked, and this seems the more prevalent use of the term.

  Sorry about the lack of historical sourcing – I’m not a historian, so while I’ve tried to give links to relevant historical episodes (Free Silver etc.), I’ve not given detailed references in this more summary article. Please feel free to add; I’ll see what I can do.

  So while the article clearly needs work, I hope it serves some useful function; in particular, I’d hope someone reading the main Inflation article would have some way to learn about historical advocacy of inflation; there’s the current Inflation#Positive section, which overlaps with the Inflationism#Contemporary advocacy section, and could probably be merged (either in the main article, or, perhaps better, given length of main article, that section made briefer and moved to this article), while the more historical examples (Free Silver etc.) seem to warrant a dedicated article.

  —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 12:49, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - There needs to be better sourcing. This is an encyclopedic topic, in my opinion, although I'm not entirely sold that this is the proper title: Historical advocacy of inflationary policy or some such may be better. Carrite (talk) 19:30, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Nbarth makes a convincing case that this is a notable non-mainstream economic policy topic that may deserve improvement, but not deletion.  Sandstein  10:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.