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Over the last couple of decades, economic inflation has been a reality that has plagued policy makers and citizens alike. We are all aware that the purchasing power of our money is not what it was, and economists have waxed eloquent in their analyses of the causes and consequences of inflation. While a study of the sociological effects of monetary inflation would be fascinating, that is not what this book is about. Klapp uses the fiscal concept of inflation that "more results in less" as a backdrop for his own investigation of symbolic inflation.
While money is a symbol that is exchanged through social processes, Klapp believes that there are other things of symbolic value that are exchanged or displayed and that undergo inflation in the social realm. Examples which he develops at some length are credentialism (the oversupply of tokens approving certification, e.g., degrees), medals and honours overly generously distributed, standing ovations that become standard, the mass production of greeting cards, the hypocrisy of smiles, fashions, and from his more recent work, the...