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Your apple analogy is not applicable here, because inflationary monetary policy is optional and instated by deliberate human choice, the decay of fruit is a non-optional natural process, not the result of deliberate human choice. Inflation is a tax, albeit an indirect one. It decreases purchasing power of the citizens (with the greatest harm incurred by the most vulnerable), it decreases the value of the nominal debt held by the government, and it's produced outside of a democratic process (federal reserve is, in theory, independent - not subject to the demands of politicians, who, in theory, represent the interests of the people). A tax that nobody voted for, that harms the poor and helps the government is nothing like the natural decay of an apple. It's value being taken from you without your consent, not unlike a mugger taking value from your wallet in the form of the currency itself. Many people engage in labor in exchange for value, denominated in currency. Theft of the value of the currency, ultimately, boils down to theft of labor. |
Most results of the productive output decay same way as apple does.
If you trade iPhone for a car, both car and iPhone will lose value over time. But in your world if you trade iPhone for $1000, only iPhone will lose value. That doesn't seem fair.
Furthermore, you're saying it harms most vulnerable, but I don't believe it is generally true.
If both a billionaire and a salaried working class person lose 10% of their wealth, gap between the two shrinks. Of course, laws of nature are such that rich are getting richer, but that's a different story.