I’m currently sitting in a room full of men in grey suits, talking about monetary and fiscal policy. And I thought I’d take another stab at an issue I’ve raised before: the natural rate hypothesis – the claim that there is a unique rate of unemployment consistent with stable inflation. Underlying the natural rate hypothesis is “accelerationism”: the idea that low unemployment will lead not just to high inflation, but to accelerating inflation, and conversely that high unemployment will not just reduce inflation but lead to ever-falling inflation. Unemployment soared for a while, then came back down to about where it started. Inflation, however, didn’t go back to where it started: it came down by about 5 percentage points:

Source: New York Times May 11, 2018 15:05 UTC