The purpose of government today is inflation.  That is why it exists. 

Capitalism is inherently deflationary.  It tends toward a crisis of values.  In a (hypothetical) perfect capitalist economy, prices would deflate all the way to zero.  The result would be a tremendous crisis - the word "recession" does not cover it - a cataclysmic depression, the likes of which the world has never seen.  Realistically, prices would be unstable, with some prices spiraling into negative territory, and others skyrocketing - to say nothing of the prices of purely financial instruments, including money itself, which is one of the things that would eventually become worthless, but which might fluctuate wildly beforehand.  We almost had a little taste of something like such a moment at the advent of the Great Depression, but it was heavily muffled and mediated.

Government's purpose in the 21st century is to prevent that, by artificially propping up prices - that is, artificially inflating prices.  Its goal is inflation, and it achieves this goal admirably.  Of course, it must exponentially raise prices, and at a certain point it may reach a kind of psychological limit, where numbers are too large for humans to comprehend meaningfully.

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