[merloen]

> Every single holder of USD lost around 1-2% a year to inflation, which is essentially a backdoor tax.

That's only true of cash, and money in checkings accounts. Money deposited in savings accounts yields interest, which (on average) more than compensates for inflation.

[mcdougle]

What banks have savings accounts that yield that much interest? The average yield on a savings account that I've seen is 0.01%. I've seen some "high yield" accounts that can get you 0.03%.

If you're talking about money market accounts (where I believe you need to park a substantial amount and can't touch the money in the account for something like 10 years, but correct me if I'm wrong), you can get up to 3% yield (just beating the stated inflation of 2%).

Am I missing something?

[tveita]

http://www.money-rates.com/research-center/best-savings-acco...

Interest rates are very low right now, but you appear to be off by a order of magnitude.

[mcdougle]

You're right. I was just pulling numbers from memory. Still, even those examples are an order of magnitude off from keeping up with 1% to 2% inflation.

[merloen]

Yeah - "on average". The last couple of years have been an exceptional situation, since the federal funds rate is almost 0%.