We're told by eminent newspapers and commentators that stagflation is the messy mixture of both high inflation and high unemployment. It isn't. Stagflation, at least as the concept was initially understood in the 1970s, meant something different. Yes, it signified the simultaneous occurrence of high inflation, high unemployment and slow economic growth; but its defining feature was the persistence of this poisonous combination over long periods of time. Although we're drifting in that direction, we're not there yet.
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