George Soros was definitely an economist.
But I have something else as my primary profession, anyway.
Have you ever seen a billionaire technical analyst, either?
But they also didn't get rich by chasing investments that don't exist.
At the very least, they would buy short-term bonds.
Warren Buffett has $128 billion in cash right now. Not sure if it's actual cash, or short-term bonds. Perhaps he hasn't saw something he liked in a while. He's waiting...
I've heard that economists haven't precisely identified why inflation happens. Maybe it's because more money is created than destroyed. The increase in money supply outpaces the increase in goods/services available.
How often does someone intentionally burn paper money? Or how often does...
Then do you know where the money comes from when everything seems to go up? It could be banks creating money through increased lending. I know 1 day isn't enough to measure anything substantially, but it could still happen that everything goes up in a given year.
In your example of real estate...
According to this site, there's about 4 trillion in M1 money supply.
If people decided to start investing/speculating in gold, stocks, bonds, etc., would that not reduce the M1 and increase everything else?
Why can't rich people/institutions choose to keep their wealth in cash? How do you know there isn't billions or trillions of dollars of wealth stored in cash right now?