The Inflation Game

From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Fri Jun 16 2000 - 00:11:46 MDT


Note: this intended to be kept simple. You could
also add living expenses, capital gains, income tax,
loans with interest, etc.
===========

Let's Play Inflation!

Here is a way for you to teach your children
how inflation works!

All you need is an ordinary Monopoly® set.
You only need to change one rule!

Make yourself the banker (and of course the government),
Count out the money for everyone just like normal.
(To make it go faster, deal out the properties at the start.)

Here is the one rule change: any time you need extra
money, just help yourself to the bank's money.
After all, you are the bank!
You can print up more if you need to!

Now, start playing, just like normal.

As you go along, offer to buy someone else's property
at a high price. You can do this because you are the government.
Now of course they have more money too!
Now they can offer to buy properties at a higher price,
but only after you did first!
Keep doing this over and over as the game goes on.

Notice how the prices just keep going up?

(If you want, put up your houses and hotels any old
time you please. Instead of putting money in the bank
to buy them (since it is your money anyway), pay it
out to the other players, as if they were the contractors
for the buildings. Later in the game, they might want charge
more for this because the prices of property went up so much.
They also might want to raise the rents.)

Who do you suppose will win this game?

Did your children get angry about this?

Now, you may have to add one more rule if they
happen to catch on: they can never, ever use anything besides
Monopoly ® bank money to play. Don't let them try to
buy something with real money. If they do, take all their
money and lock them in their rooms.
========

-- 
Forrest Bishop
Manager,
Interworld Productions, LLC
Chairman,
Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering
http://www.speakeasy.org/~forrestb



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