Who cares. The immediate affect is meaningless. The only effect we feel is from loss of value of savings, but when inflation is high over a period of time growth is greater and interest bearing accounts offset losses to savings. Owners of land and homeowners benefit from inflation as the mortgage loan (if there is one) becomes smaller in comparioson to the resale value. I'd rather see some inflation rather than zero inflation. We're not in charge of control of the world economy, and a lot of our inflation comes from our participation in a world economy. Better fiscal management could overcome the problems we experience; poor fiscal management drives poor monetary policy.
You have some smarts to you and while I do not disagree with most everything else you said I find great fallacy in the above statement.
First of all the current state of the economy reminds us that we feel alot more then devaluation of savings. We feel devaluation of a paycheck while at the same time prices around us rise. That is why inflation destroys a middle class will eventually topple any government. Every society that is not 3rd world has welfare, as the situation worsens the poor become more and more dependant on the state while the middle class is continually pushed down untill they are as poor as the poor on state assistance. This is what we are witnessing today.
So far as growth is greater this agian is true, but it is only true because there is more money being dumped into the money supply. Same traffic, just higher numbers. Over time this situation continues untill you have the present situation, where there is a 59% increase in GDP contribution per capita, while wages are stagnate.
Interest in almost all savings accounts do not come anywhere close to inflation. Saving money in this monetary system is utterly pointless unless your saving for the short term. The best thing you can do is put your money to work for you and how you see the returns faster then you see inflation. They say we are at 2% but that is a LIE. just look around you. My god, most people make less money then there parents did and EVERYTHING is 2-3 times as much money.