Under the influence of ignorance and custom, the day's pay of a country labourer will remain for a long time at a franc, while the saleable price of all the articles of consumption around him will be rising. He will sink into destitution without being able to discover the cause. In short, since you wish me to finish, I must beg you, before we separate, to fix your whole attention upon this essential point: — When once false money (under whatever form it may take) is put into circulation, depreciation will ensue, and manifest itself by the universal rise of every thing which is capable of being sold. But this rise in prices is not instantaneous and equal for all things. Sharp men, brokers, and men of business, will not suffer by it; for it is their trade to watch the fluctuations of prices, to observe the cause, and even to speculate upon it. But little tradesmen, countrymen, and workmen, will bear the whole weight of it. The rich man is not any the richer for it, but the poor man becomes poorer by it. Therefore, expedients of this kind have the effect of increasing the distance which separates wealth from poverty,

Monetary inflation became a thing for the first time since Roman days — a much easier trick with printed paper banknotes than with silver coins — but the effect was the same: the evaporation of “wealth” (which is what money supposedly represents).

What is it that happens in an inflation? The unit of money suddenly loses its identity. The crowd it is part of starts growing and, the larger it becomes, the smaller becomes the worth of each unit. The millions one always wanted are suddenly there in one's hand, but they are no longer millions in fact, but only in name.

The tendency of money to depreciate has been at times a weighty counterpoise against the cumulative results of compound interest and the inheritance of fortunes. It has been a loosening influence against the rigid distribution of old-won wealth and the separation of ownership from activity. By this means each generation can disinherit in part its predecessors' heirs; and the project of founding a perpetual fortune must be disappointed in this way, unless the community with conscious deliberation provides against it in some other way, more equitable and more expedient.

In order for all prices to rise—in other words, in order for the value of money to fall—it is necessary, it is elementary, that the supply of money, whatever precisely is meant by that, or whatever precise measurement is applied to it, should be increasing relative to the supply of goods and services; and since the supply of goods and services, however unsatisfactory we might find its growth, is certainly not diminishing, we are clearly confronted with the effective consequences of a growth in the money supply. Indeed, in a modern economy, long-term inflation—that which we have experienced in the past and of which we are experiencing an acute phase at the moment—can be explained or accounted for only in terms of the rate of increase of the money supply.

Such a crises occurs only where the ever-lengthening chain of payments,
and an artificial system of settling them, has been fully
developed. Whenever there is a general and extensive disturbance
of this mechanism, no matter what its cause, money becomes
suddenly and immediately transformed from its merely ideal shape
of money of account into hard cash. Profane commodities can no
longer replace it. The use-value of commodities becomes
valueless, and their value vanishes in the presence of its own
independent form. On the eve of the crisis, the bourgeois, with
the self-sufficiency that springs from intoxicating prosperity,
declares money to be a vain imagination. Commodities alone are
money. But now the cry is everywhere that money alone is a
commodity! As the hart pants after fresh water, so pants his soul
after money, the only wealth.

A merchant trading with capital has been injured by the depreciation of money, as his capital has not been equal to the same extent of business as before the depreciation; but there are few merchants in this situation:—their capitals, as well as that of tradesmen, are invested in goods, ships, &c. they are rather debtors than creditors to the rest of the community... the prices of their commodities will undergo the same variations as the prices of all others, their comparative value will... be the same... The depreciation of the circulating medium has been more injurious to monied men... It may be laid down as a principle of universal application, that every man is injured or benefited by the variation of the value of the circulating medium in proportion as his property consists of money, or as the fixed demands on him in money exceed those fixed demands which he may have on others. Thus the farmer is injured by any increase in the value of money... whilst he has a fixed money rent, and fixed money taxes to pay. His produce... will sell for less, whilst his taxes and rent continue the same. ...He, more than any other class of the community, is benefited by the depreciation of money, and injured by the increase of its value.

When fiat is inflated it slowly goes to zero.
When it is frozen it temporarily goes to zero.
And when it is seized it instantly goes to zero.
But hard money cannot be inflated, frozen, or seized.

… but I am under no apprehension of a capital injury from any other source than that of the continual depreciation of our Money.
This indeed is truly alarming, and of so serious a nature that every other effort is in vain unless something can be done to restore its credit.
..
Where this has been the policy (in Connecticut for instance) the prices of every article have fallen and the money consequently is in demand; but in the other States you can scarce get a single thing for it, and yet it is with-held from the public by speculators, while every thing that can be useful to the public is engrossed by this tribe of black gentry, who work more effectually against us that the enemys Arms; and are a hundd. times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in.

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.

The first people to get the new money are the counterfeiters, which they use to buy various goods and services. The second receivers of the new money are the retailers who sell those goods to the counterfeiters. And on and on the new money ripples out through the system, going from one pocket or till to another. As it does so, there is an immediate redistribution effect. For first the counterfeiters, then the retailers, etc. have new money and monetary income they use to bid up goods and services, increasing their demand and raising the prices of the goods that they purchase. But as prices of goods begin to rise in response to the higher quantity of money, those who haven't yet received the new money find the prices of the goods they buy have gone up, while their own selling prices or incomes have not risen. In short, the early receivers of the new money in this market chain of events gain at the expense of those who receive the money toward the end of the chain, and still worse losers are the people (e.g., those on fixed incomes such as annuities, interest, or pensions) who never receive the new money at all.

It is under the form of money that value begins and ends, and begins again, every act of its own spontaneous generation. It began by being £100, it is now £110, and so on. But the money itself is only one of the two forms of value. Unless it takes the form of some commodity, it does not become capital. There is here no antagonism, as in the case of hoarding, between the money and commodities. The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out of money to make more money.

It might otherwise appear paradoxical that money can be replaced by worthless paper; but that the slightest alloying of its metallic content depreciates it.

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily. . . . As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.