I have a question for the economists here. It might sound stupid and unrelated to this submission. But it is in some ways.
So assume a hypothetical case where there is a runaway inflation. Everyday things start costing thousands of dollars and buying stuff need cash to be shoved around on wheel barrows (this has actually happened in many places). Wages also inflate similarly.
What if the government decides to create a larger value currency denomination - say a 'Mega dollar' - and declare it (ie, a 'mega') as the new base denomination? Why wouldn't this work? (I presume it doesn't work, because I haven't seen it applied in practice.)
They do that too. When I first went to Mexico as a kid in the 90's, the pesos had an 'N' before the '$' to show that they were new pesos (nuevo in Spanish) which were worth 1,000 of the old peso value.
In the sense that it removes inconvenient zeroes it works. Unless you can solve the forces/perceptions that are driving the inflation, it will just continue at the same rate though.
The ongoing harm from hyper-inflation is mostly: unpredictability ie you have to negotiate with your boss every week what your paycheck is based on subjective perception of inflation, the time-value of payments suddenly becomes critical, and you can no longer store money effectively in the actual currency. Everybody else realizes this and pulls out, as they have no confidence in your economy since you can't get this under control. These makes commerce really really painful and wrecks the economy.
The actual bills is not really a huge problem. Zeroes are very easy to cram on, and the 'megadollar' technique is not infrequently deployed, sometimes simultaneously with some kind of gesture to hopefully convince people it is a turning point.
So assume a hypothetical case where there is a runaway inflation. Everyday things start costing thousands of dollars and buying stuff need cash to be shoved around on wheel barrows (this has actually happened in many places). Wages also inflate similarly.
What if the government decides to create a larger value currency denomination - say a 'Mega dollar' - and declare it (ie, a 'mega') as the new base denomination? Why wouldn't this work? (I presume it doesn't work, because I haven't seen it applied in practice.)