"Fundamentally, inflation is fraud."

"Fundamentally, inflation is fraud. The central government or bank printing more money lessens the value of the money already in circulation... An increased supply of money means ultimately that prices denominated in that money will go up. Unless you are the one to receive that new money at its point of entry, and thus keep pace with the inflation, the real value of your money holdings will go down....
    "If inflation is a fraud on the general populace, in that its false promise of improved growth rings hollow time after time, it is more specifically a fraud on [savers and] ordinary working people. When new money is created it enters the economy through the government, financial, and corporate sectors. The distributors and initial recipients of this new money obtain it before prices go up, in fact prices are then driven up by their spending of the new money. Those responsible for the inflation are thus ahead of it....
    "[I]nflation can only ever benefit the elite at the expense of ordinary people. Which is hardly surprising given the revolving door between the federal reserve and the financial sector. The same people who control the power of inflation are the ones who can directly benefit from it.
    "However, inflation is completely unnecessary for a growing and prosperous economy.... A declining general price level takes place as a consequence of true economic growth and wealth generation.... In the late nineteenth century both the UK and America had strict gold standards and declining price levels. This was also the period of greatest relative advancement in economic history, when both countries asserted themselves as truly industrialised economies, and the most powerful nations in the world.
    "Inflation is not necessary for real wealth and real growth. [See here, for example. Or, for a lengthier (yet still pleasantly concise) discussion of this subject, see George A. Selgin, Less than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy]"

~ J.R. McLeod, from his article 'Inflation, the Price Level, and Economic Growth: Everything the Elites Tell You about It Is Wrong'