“In a nation of debtors, inflation is the politically most palatable form of monetary policy. After all, everybody is focused on the short term: politicians and bureaucrats on their terms of office, consumers on their debt and their desire to buy more things they don’t need with money they don’t have, and so forth. In the long run this policy means ruin. Over time, the middle and lower classes will see their real incomes and living standards shrink, while the true beneficiaries of inflation – those who get first dibs on every dollop of newly created fiat money – amass more and more of the wealth that is stolen from its producers by inflation.