If everyone has enough that they don't need to work any more, then the economy will start signalling to people to stop producing resources because they aren't needed (by lowering prices and reducing production). Rather than making the obvious connection that most people have what they need and lower prices will free up resources for people with very limited means, the mainstream thought seems to list towards savings & retirement being an adversary that must be defeated because the GDP might drop.
Basically if people stop working because they don't have anything they want to work for, economic output will drop in a way that can only be described as good. My interpretation is economists & government aren't ready for that idea so have declared an ongoing war against retirement (and - by extension - savings).
Around the early 1900s we discovered that with careful application of stimulus we can even out these cycles and soften their impact - an innovation that has dramatically reduced human suffering over the past 100 years.
1) People still can't feed themselves and go homeless, countries that have inflationary policy sill generally have well developed welfare policy. It also isn't obvious that purposefully increasing the price of food and housing is helping, the bar of evidence for such an unintuitive claim is higher than "it's just obvious, trust me".
2) There was a different monetary system in the early 1900s. The lessons learned about it might not apply to a fiat system. Lending, credit & and the nature of money all work differently now.
3) If the problem was wild swings, then the lessons to be learned were in how to moderate the booms. There needs to be a bit more explanation about how increasing the money supply does that, and whether it dampens the booms more than it helps the busts. Smoothing the cycle is a mistake if it lowers trend growth.
4) Lack of evidence cited. "we discovered" is handwaving the important part. I suspect that is like "discovering" means in the political sense where politicians lie about something obvious as cover for a policy that they want.
5) Ignoring technological innovation and all the oil that has been used over the last 100 years. It is likely that the dramatic reduction in human suffering is totally unrelated to inflation policy.
The US runs a ~$300bn/year trade deficit with China, and historically the Chinese have been counteracting this by buying US debt and foreign assets.
[0] https://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt
[1] https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/i...
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/foreign-exchange-reserves
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/2020/opd... (source for $28T total debt, your link shows total foreign holdings of ~$7T.)
(1) Gives an incentive to deploy money. "Use it or lose it." This stimulates investment and consumption.
(2) Some prices are "sticky down," like wages; people respond much better to nominal wage increases than pay cuts. Inflation lets these prices be adjusted down more easily if needs be.
(3) Stealth tax, not only on the holders of dollar-denominated wealth but also because inflation (a) pushes people into higher tax brackets and (b) creates more taxable "capital gains". If you're a politician, it's nice to be able to pass repeated tax cuts, even as government expenditures continue to grow as a fraction of GDP.
All that said, relatively stable price levels are important. Without them, contracts get tricky, particularly around inventory or agreements into the future.
