The Federal Reserve says its remedies for inflation ‘will cause pain’, but to whom?

Easing inflation will disproportionately harm working-class people, who will reap none of the benefits down the road

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell recently made it clear that the Federal Reserve's remedies to combat runaway inflation will cause some pain". Powell's words of caution - references to the unemployment and scarcity that will follow increased interest rates - were echoed elsewhere by prominent economists. Some used Powell's same euphemism: there will be pain.

While the narratives from Powell and others imply that our shared short-term sacrifice will produce shared long-term gains, their careful framing is intended to mask a deeply unpleasant reality: neither the sacrifice nor the gains are shared. Easing inflation will disproportionately harm working-class people, and these same people will reap none of the benefits down the road.

Clara E Mattei is assistant professor of economics at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Her book, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism, will be published in November from the University of Chicago Press