Wait , you need a laptop for school , but it ' s for gaming ? <| sep |> Howard The Duck . Good movie . <| sep |> holy shit that ' s perfect <| sep |> So inflation takes buying power from citizens , as lender taxpayers and transfers it to giant indebted governments . I think you ' re referring to the idea of an inflation tax . While the statement quoted here is true , you ' re neglecting some other aspects of the inflation tax . The tax is essentially a wealth transfer from lender to borrower , and a large part of the citizenry are also borrowers too many people take out loans for cars , houses , education , etc . So it ' s less of the government taking people ' s money , and more of a consequence of inflation in an economy . While the ethics of this psuedotax on lenders is debatable , most economists would say it ' s a necessary measure . Inflation is generally a good thing , in reasonable quantities . It drives peoplecorporations to spend and invest , rather than just hoard cash . The spendinginvesting feuls economic activity , which is good for the economy . Deflation is terrible for economies , as is does the opposite . Inflation is really only bad in two major ways . Firstly , when it becomes hyperinflation , which is when the currency is inflating so fast it becomes a game of hot potato where people don ' t want to holdaccept the inflated currency . The typical examples of this is the German Weimar Republic circa 1923 Zimbabwe in 20042009 . Secondly , inflation can be bad when it lead to negative effective interest rates , which tends to attract malinvestment basically , people are more inclined to make bad investments when debt is cheap . E . g . subprime mortgage crisis . That ' s not really relevant to this issue , but I didn ' t want to advocate inflation without talking about the potential co sequences either . This is NOT OK , is it ? Firstly , as devil ' s advocate , why would it not be ? It ' s not like the government is making a profit off of the population , since the governments increased buying power is spent to improve the lives of the citizens assuming the government does its job correctly . It ' s really not much different than a progressive income tax , where the rich lenders have a higher tax burden than the poor borrowers . Secondly , in the United States at least , our central bank The Federal Reserve is politically independent . They are accountable to Congress in fulfilling their dual mandate stable prices and full employment , but no part of the government can actually command the Fed how to go about reaching those objectives . Therefore , it ' s hard to argue that the government is intentionally manipulating inflation for this purpose . I ' m not sure what country you are from , so that may not be applicable to you . However , most central banks tend to not make shortterm political decisions because it ' s not a good idea in the long run , so I doubt they would intentionally manipulate inflation for that purpose . Even discounting that , most central banks disclose what they are targeting with their policy . The federal reserve has openly acknowledged that they target a 2 % inflation rate , which according to them helps maintain price stability in the long term . So it ' s not like it ' s a secret personal agenda either . I could probably go on about this , but this post is really long . TLDR It does happen , but accidentally , and it ' s probably not as bad as your comment made it seem