People spend money because they want things more than money. No one spends money because they expect it to be worth less in the future. That's a very narrow economic interpretation.
nope, people actually with money invest them because otherwise the cash is guaranteed to lose value.
having said that, i don’t see why this has to be tied with population growth. we already have way too many people in this planet - lets focus on increasing quality of life, not number of people
People invest because the return is higher than the return on deflation. For example, if cash is worth 1% more next year, you can invest in the S&P 500 and make more money than holding cash. If cash is worth 10% less next year but the S&P 500 crashes, you'd make more money (have more purchasing power) with cash. It has nothing to do with whether money is more or less valuable, it has everything to do with comparative investments.
That can be true and it could still be higher than the rate of deflation.
Right now banks lend businesses money because the business is projected to be able to make payments at an interest rate higher than the federal funds rate. People have to buy food. People will buy the new iPhone. People pay rent. People like to travel. All of those things happen no matter what the value of money is doing, so there will always be economic incentive to start businesses that can be profitable.
My point is that it's not so one dimensional. Deflation doesn't have to be bad. You can create value without reducing the value of everything else.
In a deflationary world, it would have a lower rate of return, while hoarding cash would have a higher rate of return.
This would attack investing at both ends. Currently, the spread between inflation eating your money, and the SP earning you money is 7%. That compensates for a lot of risk. Drop that down a few percentage points (by making cash attractive), and a few more percentage points (it's harder for firms to earn profits in a deflationary environment) while keeping the risk the same, and the SP becomes a worse and worse investment.
The S&P tracks a certain basket of companies. If other companies held more value it would track those companies. There are a lot of percentage points between 7 and 0.
Deflation means USD value goes up. It doesn't mean USD value goes up 5%. A "deflationary world" could have 0.5% deflation. Or 0.00001% deflation. Again, it is incredibly narrow to view economics in this way. You lose 50% of the possible worlds you could inhabit and the economic systems and incentives you could have.
having said that, i don’t see why this has to be tied with population growth. we already have way too many people in this planet - lets focus on increasing quality of life, not number of people