It's something of a pity that hyper-inflation, and inflation, share more-or-less the same name. Hyper-inflation is bad, and ultimately makes local-money such a

It's something of a pity that hyper-inflation, and inflation, share more-or-less the same name. Hyper-inflation is bad, and ultimately makes local-money such a poor store of value as to make it useless. People will revert to non-money approaches to trade, or use a different currency for money. So yeah hyper-inflation is really bad, and (I suspect) what most Americans think of when the word "inflation" is used. By contrast regular inflation, say in the 3% to 6% band has significant upsides. It promotes exports, leverages borrowings, and so on. Equally it devalues income for those on a fixed-value pension (probably an excellent lesson to current generations of the value of inflation-linked investments and income) and that sucks. The solution though is not 0% inflation for ever, the solution is better pension plans. Yes, inflation is "high" at the moment, but it's several orders of magnitude away from hyper-inflation. And the counter to inflation, higher interest rates, is starting to happen.