It's not like there was no inflation in the gold standard era. It's just that inflation wasn't under anybody's political control - I guess if there was a gold r

It's not like there was no inflation in the gold standard era. It's just that inflation wasn't under anybody's political control - I guess if there was a gold rush you had a lot of inflation and if there wasn't you didn't. The free silver movement was a political attempt to redistribute money from one group (lenders) to another group (borrowers, but specifically farmers) by deliberately causing a one-off burst of inflation. The original goldbugs opposed it (correctly, as the author points out) for that reason. Bryan supported it because he knew it would win him the votes of those who would benefit. The same is not true of modern fiat currencies, which are for the most part managed quasi-independently with the goal of a relatively constant low, but non-zero, rate of inflation. This is better than either the gold standard or the free silver situation (both of which involved large bursts of inflation at unpredictable times), since the inflation rate can be priced in to interest rates. It is possible to maintain a principled objection to this on the grounds that the political consensus could break down and we could start manipulating inflation for political reasons again. I'm glad we have people who worry about that, but I don't feel the need to join them. I have a feeling that the ratio of 'principled objection' to 'economically illiterate' is, uh, not that high though.