About the English Language

Put simply, inflation is when prices rise. The result is that money loses its value. Deflation is when prices go down and money increases its relative value. 


Financial historian Amity Shales summarises the issues
Deflation ... hurts good people, strivers who over-borrow. {It} can cause depressions, as the U.S. saw in the early 1930s ... In the Great Depression, there wasn’t enough money around -- literally. Lacking cash, banks collapsed, and good people did lose homes or farms. More banks collapsed.{But}..... Deflation doesn’t always spell apocalypse. It can coexist with prosperity -- or even perpetuate it. There was deflation in the 1920s. Prices fell in 1923, and 1925 through 1928. The money shortage hit one sector, farming, hard.Overall, the economy grew. Unemployment stayed low. Vigilance on inflation kept prices stable. Stable prices made life easier. For example Harvard’s tuition stood at the same level, $150, between 1870 and the beginning of World War II.And when prices are ris…

According to the Urban Dictionary, hipsters are: men and women typically in their 20's and 30's {who} value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.Sounds flattering - what's not to like about  'creativity, intelligence, and witty banter'? And yet 'hipster' is a label nobody wants to claim. 



Associations with the word hipster have subtly changed in recent years. Originally the term was relatively neutral and descriptive. By the 1990s it had become pejorative: being a hipster indicated pretentiousness and self obsession. The satirical magazine The Onion drew on this feeling for their brilliant headline'Two Hipsters Angrily Call Each Other 'Hipster!'

Why the change? Perhaps a clue lies in the nearest British equivalent: 'poseur'. In the English-speaking world there is a deeply ingrained cultural suspicion of those who affect 'continenta…