Another result of prices rising all the time was that workers had to get paid twice a day to rush out and buy their goods before prices rose even more. Furthermore, this meant that wages never caught up with the ever-diminishing value of money, and were insufficient to cover the costs.
Another important effect of hyperinflation is that people in general struggled with growing shortages. When small items were equal to thousands, or even millions, of notes, foreign suppliers started refusing to accept the hyper-inflated currency. This meant that imports dried up and shortages of food and other goods got worse, for everyone.
In addition, savings, insurance policies and pensions became worthless. This mainly affected the middle class, particularly old age pensioners, and widows. For unemployed people relying on savings and pensions, this was devastating and caused many problems. On the other hand, this worked to the advantage of those in debt before the hyperinflation, who would now easily be able to pay them of as the sums involved became worthless.
Businesses were greatly affected by hyperinflation as well, for good and bad. Wealthy businessmen would benefit from hyperinflation because property was cheap and with smaller businesses struggling; the bigger, more successful businesses would take over the smaller ones at low cost. . Unfortunately, it didn’t help smaller businesses as much. They had to pay higher wages which they could not afford and had less buying power. They were also in risk of being bought out by the bigger businesses leaving them unemployed. Leading on from this, the workers would struggle too because when the smaller businesses got taken over, they would lose their jobs and then struggle to pay for goods, whilst unemployed. .
On some occasions, one result of hyperinflation was that the government printed more money. This made it better to start with, but ultimately made inflation worse and initiated another cycle. As the prices rose, more money was printed, causing prices to rise again.
In conclusion, the main effect of hyperinflation was that people struggled with buying what they needed, however there are many other effects that caused shortages and hardship: savings and debts becoming worthless, bigger businesses taking over the smaller ones, leading to unemployment, and the government printing more money. There are lots of effects of hyperinflation, and although it benefited a few people, on the whole, it caused chaos and misery for the people.
