Does inflation hurt the poor or the rich more?

Question

From book definition it seems to me that inflation is a tax on the rich, but not sure the academic translation lives up in the real world

Answer 1

Inflation leads to high nominal interest rates, causes stock prices to fall, and will result in poorer economic performance, so in the long term inflicts some damage on everyone. But unexpected inflation hurts creditors and helps debtors. The rich tend to be creditors and the middle class debtors (home mortgages) and the poor neither.

Answer 2

Try this. Ten people on an island. Everyone has one hundred dollars. One guy picks a coconut and prices it at five dollars.
Next island, everyone starts out with one thousand dollars, how much is the coconut. Maybe fifty. It is all relative. It is just a matter of how much money is printed.
Later as the money changes hands and someone prints more money and you have the most coconuts, you do not get hurt because your coconuts go up (inflate) in value and the poor get hurt and you get richer and the government got to spend the dollars that they printed.

Answer 3

Inflation hurts everyone... suddenly poor people have less money and rich people still have money but it's worth less.

I want to say it hurts poor people more, though, because rich people are generally the ones who collect more from the inflated prices, like business owners.

Answer 4

Hurts the poor.

Answer 5

inflation isn't a tax, its when, due to economic imbalances, our currency becomes worth less (therefore we pay more)

and inflation hurts everyone, but i guess it would be better to have money as a cushion than not have any at all

Answer 6

It hurts everyone, however the poor will do the suffering.