Monetary inflation is theft.
If I work 8 hours a day, and get paid for my 8 hours a day, the money I make is a store of wealth for the labor I've accomplished. It should be constant.
If I keep working 8 hour days, and the value of the money is obliterated through inflation, then I am being robbed of my labor. I should be able to save my money and have my labor be as valuable 5 years from now as it is today, but under the current system, I must either work more to achieve the same income ['purchasing power,' probably is a better name for it], or demand higher pay, and since pay raises usually lag behind an inflating currency, I simply work more.
There is no incentive to save money whatsoever with currency inflation, as the pressure is to spend the money while the money still buys stuff. That leads to lots of short term purchasing and the increased need to borrow money for long term things that you can't save money for (like homes, automobiles).
You remember the saying, "A penny saved is a penny earned"?
Now-a-days, if you save a penny, it will 'disappear' in about a year or so, due to monetary inflation.
This is why retirees are having such a hard time these days. They might have been paid $1.40/hr when they were growing up and trying to save money for retirement, but $1.40 won't buy nearly as much today as it did when the old folks were working. Ideally, they should have been able to save enough to live comfortably in their golden years, but the Federal Reserve and the government screwed them over.
