It seems that "inflation" has an equivocal meaning here. I presume he meant that the purchasing power of the currency would diminish and it's not hard to imagin

It seems that "inflation" has an equivocal meaning here. I presume he meant that the purchasing power of the currency would diminish and it's not hard to imagine why. Look at housing - if the credit wouldn't be cheap (or if it wouldn't be available on a large scale), the houses have to have a price between the basic price (the combined cost of land plus house construction) and the price that the market can bear. Given the credit, the housing becomes able to bear a lot more. The housing credit affects just housing, but a basic income would affect pretty much everything an average Joe would require. A basic income would rise both the basic prices for every human-involved activity (the payed work becomes more expensive) and the bar of what a vast pool of potential clients could bear/afford.