>It comes at a heavy cost though: you need to keep tons of the yellow stuff around A cost to the government, but much less of a cost to the lower classes, who

>It comes at a heavy cost though: you need to keep tons of the yellow stuff around A cost to the government, but much less of a cost to the lower classes, who pay low taxes thanks to progressive taxation so inflation represents the biggest drain on their wealth (especially since most don't have access to financial instruments or the education to use them). >I mean if you're going to invoke extraordinary measures like this It's not necessarily extraordinary; we haven't seen the Federal government bail out a state yet but we also haven't yet seen a state undergo a complete financial collapse, so it's quite possible there'd be a bailout if things got bad enough. The WSJ predicts a bailout of the states is upcoming: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-biden-bailout-of-blue-states-and-cities-rhode-island-california-pension-liability-underwater-rates-svb-5033c1e5 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-biden-bailout-of-blu... >like the government debasing the currency, which was still done even when countries were on the gold standard They did that by essentially turning their currency into a fiat currency: saying it was worth X, when the actual precious metal it consisted of was only worth e.g. half of X. But yes you're right that in theory nothing prevents a government with 100% gold standard from debasing it like that, however doing so would be more visible to citizens than inflation since it'd require centralising how the currency was priced.