Well, especially since when you look at the way money is held across different social classes, it tends to form a much larger percentage of total wealth at the

Well, especially since when you look at the way money is held across different social classes, it tends to form a much larger percentage of total wealth at the lower classes than at higher classes, who hold their wealth in other assets because they can afford to, while the lower classes, needing the majority of their wealth in liquid form for routine expenses, cannot, and so have more exposure to inflation in the first place. There's not much way around this as long as you're dealing with a currency that can be expanded by credit, because with or without a central bank, fractional reserve banking increases the money supply -- if anything, a central bank allows you to TRY to bring some order to that process. But yes, the difference is that direct taxation would be paid by the higher classes, while inflation is shouldered predominantly by the lower, and both have a way at eating into economic output in real terms.