Inflation
I will not comment on whether or not inflation is beneficial or otherwise. I know not the answer. I will not comment on the magnitude of inflation which is healthy. I do not know the answer. I will comment on a few causes since I do know the answer. Not all causes will be addressed since, again, I am not familiar with all causes.
To determine whether or not you are personally an agent of inflation you need only ask yourself one question and one question alone: by doing my job, do I produce wealth.
This is a much more complex question than it first might appear. Money is not itself wealth. Money is only wealth if it is backed up by material or intellectual goods. If you are not producing such goods directly then you are a personification of inflation. You personify inflation because you make money without producing wealth, which is the working definition of inflation we are using here.
This is necessarily a simplification, but for the sake of argument it is appropriate.
This is not to say that if you personify inflation that something is fundamentally wrong. Many of the jobs which fall under this catagory are vital to life, such as doctors and nurses, make the rest of our lives easier, such as sanitation workers, or make the actually productive people function better, such as managers.
I feel as though it is unnecessary to discus doctors, nurses and sanitation workers as I feel as though their value is self-evident. I intend to discus managers in some detail, however.
Some management is important to the functioning of society. Someone needs to make sure that many functions, such as agreements between the company the government, actually take place. Other examples of useful management would be people who do not directly add wealth to society but increase the value of final products in other ways, such as people who write manuals and those who test prototypes and those who repair damaged goods.
In modern times, however, management structures have become too large and organizations are routinely supersaturated with managers. I wonder what a healthy ratio of managers to productive people is. I wonder how many layers of managers is needed to run an organization. I wonder why some of our most apparently successful institutions are comprised solely of managers. I wonder why, when we already have far too many managers already, schools are still eager to produce as many managers as possible.