[katabasis]

Not an economist either, but lately I've been enjoying Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century", and he describes how England and France saw very little inflation for most of the 18th and 19th centuries. This monetary regime allowed a "society of rentiers" to prosper – wealthy individuals could live off the income from assets like government bonds indefinitely without needing to really work (lack of inflation meant that income wouldn't devalue over time).

The story changes in the 20th century of course – governments racked up huge debts from world wars and related crises but instead of paying them down gradually over a long time (as England did after the Napoleonic wars in the previous century), they inflated their way out ("euthanizing" much of the idle rentier class in the process).

Historical economics is pretty fascinating – studying the past in this way really makes it clear how exceptional of a time we are living in now.