Spider-Man vs. the evil Fed Monster

John Paul Koning takes a look at Spider-Man's battle with inflation. Demand for Spidey is actually down, but the price keeps going up.

Another way to look at it is this: with a growing demand for all goods and the corresponding increase in their prices, consumers would now have to spend more of their money on Amazing Spider-Man, leaving less for, say, Time magazine. Demand for Time would fall, leading to a decline in prices. Yet all prices have been rising.

In order to understand why the price of Spider-Man, Time, and all other goods have been rising, we must consider the opposite side of the equation, the supply and demand for money. When a comic book fan buys an issue of Amazing Spider-Man, they are exchanging the paper on which Spider-Man is printed for paper on which money is printed. Though we often assume that money is simply an invariable unit of measure, it too is subject to the same forces that a comic is.

Fun stuff.